A few of the Wizards players had career years this year. Here's a list of the players that are in
at least their second year in the league and the career highs they hit this year.
Josh Wolff reached a career high in goals (11), games started (27), and minutes played in league
play (2,348).
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Though it's a little blurry, here is a picture of Michael Kraus scoring the game-winning goal
against his former club.
Our Swope Park Rangers topped the Creighton University Bluejays 4-2 this morning on the strength of
goals from Adam Cristman (2), former Creighton standout Michael Kraus and Aaron Hohlbein.
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The Swope Park Rangers started the fall portion of their "season" with a 4-2 win over the
University of Creighton today out at the Swope Park training facility. You can follow the twitter
updates of the game over at the Wizards twitter page. Here's the lineup that started the game.
Pardo
Leathers - Hohlbein - McKenzie - Marquess
Morsink
Myers - Zusi - Espinoza
Cristman - Thompson
From what I was told by people at the game, the Rangers had a few early chances, beating the
keeper, but unable to beat the post.
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Ouch!
It was the play of all plays. It was something Kevin Hartman had never seen in his long MLS career.
It was pretty darn hilarious. Check out Thad Bell's recount of Aaron Hohlbein being nutmegged while
being...nut...megged yesterday after training.
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Saw something unusual and hilarious at practice today. Coach Pascarella was working with Kronberg
and Pardo on the near goal.Kronberg taking a shot on Pardo...While I do not have a shot of it, we
all saw it happen. Metro Sports was interviewing Aaron Hohlbein after the scrimmage. One of the
shots by a goalie missed to one side.
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The Wizards created numerous chances last night, tying a season high with 11 shots on goal, but
could not beat Revolution goalkeeper, Matt Reis. The 0-0 result gave the Wizards a point, but with
that many shots on goal, you would have hoped that KC could have put one of them away.
It was actually New England that started the game stronger, and almost capitalized.
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I talked with Aaron yesterday. We discuss him stepping up to help lead in Jimmy's absence and of
course we have to mention "Dive-Gate".
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On this 4th of July weekend Houston comes into KC hoping to improve on their goalless effort
from last weekend against one of the worst defenses in the league (LA's), while KC, tries to make
it 2 wins in a row in the league after a horrible Superliga performance.
KC will be missing defensive leader and captain Jimmy Conrad, as well as midfielders Davy Arnaud
and Roger Espinoza due to Gold Cup call ups, while Kevin Souter will not be available due to
injury.
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It was the 34th minute on a less than exciting game when New England attacker Michael Videira
went up for a ball with KC defender Aaron Holhbein. In his effort to head it he swung his elbow
back and struck Hohlbein in the face. Referee Jorge Gonzalez pulled out the red card right away and
sent Videira to the showers.
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Here are this week's player interviews with this week's poll winners. This week both Herculez Gomez
and Aaron Hohlbein were interviewed. Check them out. Sorry for the short post on this.
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Davy Arnaud scoring the first goal...Davy picking himself up and starting to celebrate...Davy
running to hug his team mates...The team celebrates while the Cauldron celebrates in the
background...Claudio Lopez pulls down Emmanuel Osei...Lopez letting Osei know he was not pleased
with being kicked...Osei gets up and shoves Claudio as well.
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Aaron Hohlbein's goal last night, was the Wizards 699th in all competitions, the Wizards next goal
will be their 700th in all competitions.
Davy Arnaud's goal was his 37th in league play for the Wizards, breaking a tie with Josh Wolff for
third place on that list. He's 2 goals behind Chris Klein for second.
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When New England defender Emmanuel Osei received a red card in the 31st minute of last night's game
between KC and New England the cheers from the crowd were joined with a few groans. As I've
mentioned earlier, the Wizards have struggled to score when they're a man up. Last night, the
Wizards finally did it, taking advantage of the man up to score 2 more goals and defeat the
Revolution 3-1.
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Another disappointing game. The game started off fairly even with the Crew maybe getting a little
better of play but the Wizards had their chances.Herculez Gomez attempts to get off a shot...Then
in the 14th minute Holhbein, Conrad and Hartman collide. It sounded like Kevin called off his
defenders but they did not hear him.
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Saturday night's game at the CAB was just that. Ugly. The Wizards showed little creativity,
little effort and little of anything as they fell (and got swept for the season) by the Columbus
Crew 2-0. Here is my recap and commentary.
The Game:
Columbus was missing 2 of their best players in Alejandro Moreno and Frankie Hejduk while KC was
missing part time started Roger Espinoza.
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Dynamo, Aaron Hohlbein and Jonathan Leathers will be appearing Sunday afternoon at Lee's Summit
Downtown Days. The Reserves take on the Brass at 11 a.m. at Swope, then Hohlbein and Leathers will
be appearing afterward. For more info on the Downtown Days, visit their website.
Schedule:
Dynamo--12:00-1:00
Hohlbein--1:00-2:00
Leathers--2:00-3:00
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It off to the West to meet the up and down Real Salt Lake who it seems expended all it's
ammunition in a 6-0 defeat of New England in April and now is on a slide, having scored only 3
goals in 4 games. It's going to be a tough visit for the Wizards who have struggled to score and
don't seem to have found consistency from the ever changing starting 11 that Curt Onalfo sends
out.
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We have the second-ever Dog's Night at the Wizards coming up on May** 23 as Chivas USA comes to
town. In order to purchase tickets for a dog, you must fill out an order form and fax/mail or hand
deliver to our office along with the dog's latest vaccination information. For more information on
the event and to obtain the order form, visit www.
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Thad over at The Back Post has the interview with this week's poll winner, Aaron Hohlbein. It's a
good interview where Hohlbein talks about the goal, the San Jose, the Seattle game, and if there's
any pressure from Matt Besler for the starting spot. Speaking of Besler, who finished second in
this past week's poll, Thad was also able to get an interview with him this past week.
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This week I was able to get all the of the top vote getters in the fan poll. First up is Aaron
Hohlbein. He scored his first MLS goal last week and seems to have be the pick to be Jimmy's
partner in the center of the defense.I asked Aaron to talk about getting that first goal and about
taking over for Jimmy's scoring.
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It was a cold, wet, windy, miserable day out at Community America Ballpark today as the Wizards
took on the San Jose Earthquakes. Rain and snow along with 40 mph winds made for a difficult game
on the field for both teams as well as in the stands. The Wizards came out the quickest of the two
teams and seemed to be the quicker to adjust to the elements as well.
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Holy cow was that a cold one! The temperature at kickoff was 38, but with 40 mile per hour winds
and some rain/snow/sleet mixtures, it felt a lot colder than that. Props to our players for
adjusting well to the weather and really dominating the run of play. San Jose generated just three
shots and only one on goal.
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It was fun out at practice today, the scrimmages are always fun but after practice was the most
entertaining. I will put that up in another post later on...Practice observations: There was
another warm body in camp today that I did not recognize, probably a player to fill out the
practice but I could not find out any info for sure.
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The Wizards continued their early preseason success down in Florida today with a come from behind
3-2 win over the Chicago Fire. That's the good news, the bad news, is that in the first half, when
the two teams were basically playing their first team, the Wizards fell behind 2-0 on goals by
Brian McBride and Patrick Nyarko.
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The Wizards won their first game of the preseason today, as they beat the US U-17 team 7-0 today
down in Florida. Hillcrest Road has write ups on each of the goals and the lineups for each half.
In goal for the U-17's was Wizards' Juniors' player, Jon Kempin. Players getting goals today were
Kevin Souter and Aaron Hohlbein in the first half, with Nelson Pizarro, Chance Myers, trailist
Ferenc Béres (more on him later) getting two, and Michael Kraus.
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Jon Kempin started in goal for the U.S. U-17s and made excellent saves off of efforts from Davy
Arnaud in the 20th and 27th minutes, but we were able to score two past him in his 45 minutes of
action.
Goals24th-Morsink put Souter through behind defense near top of the 18.
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It's almost time for another one of those wonderful expansion drafts. This year the 14 current MLS
teams will help stock the Seattle Sounders FC. Today teams had to turn in their list of protected
players to the league. The Wizards list has now been published on Hillcrest Road. The only surprise
on that list is a big one, Carlos Marinelli.
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I'm starting a new little feature called "Stats on Sunday" (or whatever the day is after
the game we play). Anyways, what I'll do, is break down some of the stats from the game. So here
are some other stats from last nights game.
- The BIG one first, Kerry Zavagnin became the Wizards all time leader in minutes played in MLS
matches, passing Nick Garcia.
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Yes, it was an own goal, yes one of our players still haven't scored since Claudio Lopez against
LA, but all that will matter in the end is that the scoreline says 1-0 with KC being on top. In a
game that KC had the better of possession and the more dangerous of play, they could only manage 1
goal.
Winning the toss, KC made Salt Lake go into the sun in the first half, which helped to negate much
of Salt Lake's offense in the first half.
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After getting a chance to watch the game from the weekend, a mixed reaction. Definitely good to be over and done with the road trip. Six games straight on the road is not going to be easy for any team, no matter how good. Coach Onalfo was forced to shake things up, thanks to injuries to Carlos Marinelli (unable to start, but subbed on later in the game) and Scott Sealy's wife was giving birth, so he didn't make the trip.
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Yesterday, our reserve team topped New York's 2-1 on a late goal from recently signed Nelson
Pizarro. We are now 3-0-2 in MLS Reserve Division play, tops in the league.
Eloy Colombano opened the scoring in the 38th minute, taking a pass from Aaron Hohlbein near the
top of the 18 and curling a right-footed shot into the top corner at the back post for his second
Reserve Division goal of the year.
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The Wizards may lose a couple of their U-23 players for the last game of this 6th game road trip on
the 24th of May in LA. This is due to the fact that the US Under-23 team has been invited to the
Toulon Invitational in France, May 20-29. According to Ives Galarcep, the tournament will be used
to look at fringe players for the Olympics coming up later this year.
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