{"id":18404,"date":"2013-03-03T00:30:17","date_gmt":"2013-03-03T05:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=18404"},"modified":"2013-03-03T00:57:06","modified_gmt":"2013-03-03T05:57:06","slug":"thats-a-wrap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=18404","title":{"rendered":"That’s a Wrap"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Lee<\/a>

Lee Nguyen and A.J. Soares battle for the ball in a preseason scrimmage earlier this winter. (Photo: Chris Aduama\/aduama.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. –\u00a0While the rest of MLS gets set to kick off the regular season this weekend, the New England Revolution\u00a0quietly wrapped up\u00a0its preseason camp\u00a0behind closed doors on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Given a first week bye, head coach Jay Heaps\u00a0organized a closed-door, intra-squad\u00a0scrimmage – which lasted 60 minutes – to keep his\u00a0team’s fitness sharp.<\/p>\n

Additionally, he wanted to use the scrimmage to provide\u00a0one last chance to those battling for spots inside the gameday 18 before the regular season.<\/p>\n

“I always wanted the players to play out that competition rather than having it being decided a little too early,” Heaps said after the scrimmage. “You saw it happening today where guys were fighting.”<\/p>\n

They had every reason to. Saturday’s scrimmage was no hastily-assembled affair. Heaps meant business, and proved it by\u00a0bringing in a\u00a0full referee crew to officiate.<\/p>\n

Once the opening whistle sounded, Heaps and his fellow coaches looked hard at their players. They made mental notes. And the players, for their part, rose to the challenge.<\/p>\n

“You could see that guys wanted it,” center back A.J. Soares said. “Guys were getting in each other’s faces and it was like a real game. It’s just getting us a little bit more on our toes getting ready for (next week).”<\/p>\n

Although\u00a0the coaching staff is set to\u00a0settle back into its regular season weekly\u00a0routine come Monday, Heaps\u00a0wanted to\u00a0make sure that the intensity level to wouldn’t fall into a lull before the end of the bye week.<\/p>\n

“I wanted to get the guys fired up for something,” Heaps said. “It’s a great challenge to have as a coach, but you have to manage it. We’ll work toward the exact lineup for Chicago on Monday, but right now, we’re just finishing up our preseason.”<\/p>\n

THE KIDS ARE OK<\/strong><\/p>\n

Depending upon how you view it, the Revolution’s current crop of rookies has either\u00a0made Heaps’ job easier\u00a0or harder this winter.<\/p>\n

On one hand, Andrew Farrell, Luis Soffner,<\/span> Donnie Smith and Gabe Latigue have made strong impressions with the coaching staff. For that, Heaps isn’t about to complain.<\/p>\n

“They’ve come in ready, and that’s something we’re really\u00a0happy about,” Heaps said.\u00a0“Those guys have fought hard for everything and what I like most is that nothing was given to those guys. They’ve battled since day 1.”<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the four freshman have made the coaches’ jobs a little more difficult this winter. Instead of simply sticking around to provide depth, each draft pick strengthened\u00a0his case for\u00a0a spot on the roster\u00a0as the preseason progressed.<\/p>\n

While that certainly made for some interesting positional battles, Soares gushed about this year’s rookie class following Saturday’s scrimmage.<\/p>\n

“No joke, they all look awesome,” Soares said. “I’m thrilled with how they’ve done, thrilled with how they’ve reacted and their\u00a0mentality (on the field). The coaches did a great job scouting those guys this year. You can tell they did their homework on picking these guys.”<\/p>\n

READY TO BREAK OUT OF THE GATE<\/strong><\/p>\n

Both Heaps and Soares downplayed\u00a0the\u00a0potential for any hiccups\u00a0a first week bye could present.<\/p>\n

In fact,\u00a0the third-year c<\/span>enter back\u00a0called it a “blessing,”\u00a0then\u00a0employed an interesting metaphor to describe the team’s\u00a0collective mindset.<\/p>\n

“We’re like that horse waiting to get out of the gate,” Soares said. “It’s just keeping us more excited for that first game.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saturday’s closed-door, intra-squad scrimmage officially drew the curtains on Revolution preseason camp. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18407,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/LEE-AJ.png?fit=481%2C259","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18404"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18404"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18414,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18404\/revisions\/18414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}