I ended up catching a bit of the evening session of the tryouts on Friday. At this point, the tryout roster had been trimmed by over 20 players (there are still some big cuts to go though). I was really happy to see that KC, Bryan, and Robert (the three keepers I'd noticed Thursday and Friday morning ) were all still on the roster.

Last night was a rarity in soccer, a big game in which the final score didn't really matter. RSL's reserves beat the BYU Cougars in the Coug's brand new Stadium at South Field in front of 3110 fans. Beat is probably too soft a word, RSL's Robbie Findley put the ball past BYU's Brandon Gillam twice in the stretch of two minutes midway through the first half, at which point RSL seemed to let off the gas.

Zack De Francis has been the most searched for name on my blog, and has played a big roll in BYU's success so far this year. Over the last several days, Zack has been kind enough to trade emails with me to create the interview below. Read on to learn a little bit more about BYU's star striker.

Right now you're among the statistical leaders in the PDL, despite having played fewer games than the other players.

Coach Watkins stopped me on Friday evening and told me I didn't want to miss the Saturday evening (and final) session of the tryouts. He told me the competition was intense and there would be a lot of great soccer on display. With a teaser like that, how could I stay away.

The first two rounds of cuts took the pool of players from eighty-five down to fifty, and by the end of Saturday night, it would have to be trimmed to twenty-five plus six incoming freshmen.

Saturday night, the Cougars will visit the suddenly hot Cascade Surge. BYU has been playing well too, chalking up road wins at Ogden and Spokane. Zack De Francis is continuing to score with a goal in each of the last two games bringing him to a season total of 7 (check out my interview with Zack if you're a De Francis fan).

It's been a good weekend for the teams I follow. Both BYU and RSL won their games, with BYU claiming the season series over Ogden 3-0-1 and RSL climbing into 1st place in the (somewhat weak) west. RSL's U-17 team also won it's final round game against DC United's U-17 team, earning both the SUM U-17 championship and entry into the 2009 Trofeo Quixote U-17 tournament in Madrid, Spain.

I wasn't able to watch the game live Friday night, but I did record the BYU-TV broadcast to watch on Saturday. I really wanted to see how the Vancouver Whitecaps Residency program looked. I've got to say that it's an impressive program.

For the most part, Vancouver owned the field last night coming away with a 2-0 win.

So what is Clint "Cleatus" Mathis up to these days? He was in and out at Ergotelis with the club avoiding relegation but his short contract not being renewed. Awhile back he popped up with some MLS reserve teams with the most recent of those being for Real Salt Lake in a reserve frinedly against BYU.

My son and I hit the Indoor Practice Facility over at BYU at 6AM this morning to watch the first session of tryouts. It was really exciting to see 70-odd players there, everyone from returning players to high school students looking for a spot on the team.

After a quick briefing by Coach Watkins, the players were split into a number of teams to play a series of scrimmages.

No pictures today, since I made an unplanned stop at the tryouts while dropping my son off for early morning seminary classes. I was only able to stay for 30 minutes or so, enough time to catch two rounds of 8v8 scrimmages. They play two scrimmages at a time, side by side on the indoor field, which makes it hard to pick out all the good stuff that's going on it's awfully fun to try though.

I just saw a couple of articles that update my recent posts on SYL players training with West Ham and BYU's new soccer facility. In the interest of keeping people informed, here's what I found:

• First, a short interview with SYL Player Aaron Laing. This one is pretty cool, Aaron gives his impression of the ODP camps that the SYL puts on and looks ahead to his opportunity to train in England.

Tonight I've decided to try something new. I'm typing up this blog entry and will post it once I get home (I'd have posted it from here, but I can't get any WiFi signal here at Haws Field). Hopefully this goes pretty well.

After last weeks loss, BYU coach Chris Watkins talked about using the remainder of the season to get younger players some time as the Cougars build toward next season.

The PDL has released its schedule for 2008. I've extracted the BYU games here:

Date Day Visiting Team Home Team Time (MDT) May 16 Friday Cascade Surge BYU Cougars 7:30 PM May 17 Saturday Spokane Spiders BYU Cougars 7:30 PM May 23 Friday BYU Cougars Yakima Reds 8:05 PM May 24 Saturday BYU Cougars Tacoma Tide 8:05 PM May 30 Friday BYU Cougars Abbotsford Mariners 7:30 PM May 31 Saturday BYU Cougars Vancouver Whitecaps 4:00 PM June 13 Friday Yakima Reds BYU Cougars 7:30 PM June 14 Saturday Tacoma Tide BYU Cougars 7:30 PM June 17 Tuesday BYU Cougars Ogden Outlaws 7:00 PM June 13 Friday Yakima Reds BYU Cougars 7:30 PM June 14 Saturday Tacoma Tide BYU Cougars 7:30 PM June 17 Tuesday BYU Cougars Ogden Outlaws 7:00 PM June 26 Thursday BYU Cougars Spokane Spiders 8:00 PM June 28 Saturday BYU Cougars Cascade Surge 8:05 PM July 4 Friday Ogden Outlaws BYU Cougars 7:30 PM July 12 Saturday BYU Cougars Ogden Outlaws 7:00 PM July 15 Sunday Ogden Outlaws BYU Cougars 7:30 PM July 18 Friday Vancouver Whitecaps BYU Cougars 7:30 PM July 19 Saturday Abbotsford Mariners BYU Cougars 7:30 PM

This year, all of BYU's games are against conference foes (unlike last year when the Colorado Rapids U23 played at BYU).

Wow! You go away for a week to take a boring HP class (in beautiful San Jose, there are always upsides) and what happens? News of the new BYU soccer facility breaks, of course. On Monday, March 10th at noon, BYU is breaking ground on their new soccer facility. This is really just an expansion of the existing South Field, and will be used by the men's and women's soccer teams as well as the lacrosse team (for televised matches).

Just a short report for now, I'll post more on Monday when I have some time.

The Cougars got a big win (1-5) over the Cascade Surge last night. I was out camping with my scouts, so I didn't get to see it. It sounds like there were some injuries coming out of that game though.

Tonight, BYU took 3 more points in a 1-2 win over Spokane.

Hey, it looks like the Deseret News has some coverage up from Thursday's game. It's not much, less than BYU's own press release, but it is something.

I'd love to see more regular coverage of the PDL (especially the local Ogden and BYU teams) in our local papers. If you'd like to help make it happen, drop a line to the Sports Editor, Kent Condon.