University Adam Jones & Magnus Kristensen Earn All-America Honours

[ArticleBot]

RUSSELLVILLE, Ark. – After being named West Region Player of the Year, Simon Fraser junior midfielder Adam Jones was today named to the 2016 NCAA Division II Men's Soccer All-America First Team and junior defender Magnus Kristensen was named to the Second Team.

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[tremy-1]

RUSSELLVILLE, Ark. – After being named West Region Player of the Year, Simon Fraser junior midfielder Adam Jones was today named to the 2016 NCAA Division II Men's Soccer All-America First Team and junior defender Magnus Kristensen was named to the Second Team.

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Well done .

 

[ThiKu]

These are the types of players that will be given that professional opportunity they should in the Canadian Premier League.

 

[Regs]

These are the types of players that will be given that professional opportunity they should in the Canadian Premier League.

You would think so but unfortunately his old man is not a Canada Soccer supporter and will be pushing him to head to England and eventually pull a Hargreaves

Maybe.

 

[djones]

@Regs no, Wales!

@tremy-1 Cheers!

@ThiKu wouldn't that be nice! An opportunity for these types of Canadians who are kinda flying under the radar and need a chance to prove themselves. Heard today that there is 12 cities that are hoping to have a club from coast to coast. BC must be in the equation.

I found this interesting,
- of the 33 players selected to the 1st/2nd/3rd All-America teams, only 9 are from North America (only one Canadian). The rest from all over the world, literally!
- The commisioner's association MVP from Pfieffer University wasn't selected to any of the NSCAA NCAA All-America team. Weird!
- last year's NCAA Div II champions (Pfieffer) are moving to NCAA Div III next season.

Adam had a fantastic year and as his dad, I'm super proud of him. 213 teams (30+ players on each team) in the league and he makes the top 11. After winning the award, he spent the next 9 hours studying for an exam that he needed to write the next day. He's battled really hard to overcome some health scares when he was younger and a broken leg at a UBC recruitment session in his grade 12 year. UBC, my alma mater, passed on him. To get this far being a small (sorry, my fault), technical, smart player, sticking to his footballing principles in a league where pure athleticism is the gold standard is satisfying. He showed that there is a place for the small gifted player.

But I'm more proud of his attitude towards how he won it. When we talked about it after his exam, he knows he has a very good supporting cast who battled hard all season long. There are some very talented players there and many of them developed in the same club philosophy he developed in at CMF/Roman Tulis. If the team didn't do so well during the season and end up #2 heading into the playoffs, maybe he's not selected. It's a fine line and NCAA is very stat driven! His teammates get him the ball a lot and trust him with many of the pressure situations.

He plays with an equally small, gifted player in his brother who link up extremely well together and know what each other are doing. His brother dropped back to play a deeper holding midfield spot this season allowing his older brother to get forward more knowing that his stats would be less and Adam's would improve.

He also mentioned his coaching staff that really believes in him (and the team) and has a unique coaching philosophy that is, in my opinion, very brave, patient and novel for a playing environment that is heavily result based/win now, and it suits Adam very well. Instead of spewing out answers to problems on the field (as I tend to do as a coach), they allow the players to solve these challenges on their own and patiently wait for them to come up with answers allowing them to learn from their mistakes and take ownership of the situation. This feeds Adam's creativity and gives him freedom to use his strength which is his soccer brain. It's helped him develop more and will help him and SFU head into next year knowing that doing anything other than winning the championship is not good enough. Clint is a very good recruiter and man-manager while Harmesy is a former player who both my boys love training for with all his pro experience and his ability to know when to kick them up the backside when they need it.

He also knows that the one award he really wanted to win this season was the NCAA Div II championship and he came up short on the day.

The ownership of the loss to Pomona in the second round of the playoffs is on the players and that ownership will spur them on next year to do hopefully greater things.

 

[Regs]

Awesome post @djones !

 

[Rangerforever]

Ditto

 

[trece verde]

Congrats, DJ! When I worked with your Missus hundreds of years ago, she would tell me about how much the boys loved footy (then mostly watching dad play). Glad to see that love of the game still there. You've done a great job with them. All the best to you and yours!

 

[djones]

Cheers! Have a great Christmas and New Year!