I represented International Club (ISC) along with Jason, Pato and Sakiko in the honors program’s philanthropy – the Nerd Wars (previously called Who Wants to Have A 4.0?) for the second year running. Honors program at UE organizes the trivia type quiz contests among groups of student and faculty. The winners of the student and faculty contest in the grand finale for the title. Last year we reached the second round of the students’ competition and this year we were in the last four.

It’s obvious that most of the questions were about American society, majority of the rest occupied by European trivia questions. European tradition has always influenced the American society. Only a few questions were related to rest of the world. Nevertheless we reached to the last four of the student category. I must mention my good friend Jason (from Georgia, “state not the country”) who single-handedly took us that far.

Like I mentioned in my previous blog, the International Club at UE plays an invitational soccer match against the International Club of USI. With the approval of USI Intl Club it has now been named as Evansville World Soccer Invitational. We initially started the match to be an annual one but our counterparts at USI, probably encouraged by their victory last semester, wanted it to be every semester. They hosted the first of the two matches on Sunday November 11th.

The day began brightly with a lovely morning with a clear sky for a November day. Along with about 30-40 fans (most of them were intensive English students) we drove to the Strassweg Field at USI. By the time the game was scheduled, it started raining heavily with thunderstorm. Perhaps it indicated our fate in the game. We had a very good start; we scored a goal in the first ten minutes. We were playing good until our star midfielder Candle was so intentionally and harshly fouled that he could not continue the game. His absence affected the team composure and our opponents clearly took advantage of that and they started taking control over the game. They equalized just before the half time.

We were already missing our most dependable right defender Shunsuke due to injury during practice and Candle’s injury set us back. Our midfield, which I thought was the strongest aspect of our team, disappointed me as they failed to help defenders when the other team was attacking. We didn’t have enough play in the midfield. We have excellent individuals but we lacked the teamwork. We didn’t play good football in the second half and ended up losing 4-1. USI Intl Club was the better team that day and they won.

Although we lost, we gained valuable game experience, chance to know one another better and probably strengthened our friendship. We had few positive displays – Takahito was our man of the match, Fico played brilliantly, Theo was outstanding as the keeper, Eloho and Lotanna did good job in defense. And as for me I probably gained few more critics as I failed to manage the team as a captain. I was criticized during the team selection and during the game for not having a scrupulous game plan and not fielding everybody. Some of us thought we did not have enough time to come back to the game towards the end of second half even though most of us agree it was a competitive game and we don’t accept the loss until the final whistle blows.