Players, alumni enjoy exhibition

ST. LOUIS -- The Southeast Missouri State women's soccer team demonstrated their fearsome skills Saturday in an exhibition game at the Savvis Center in St. Louis -- playing a specially selected team of Southeast alumni.

The current Redhawks, directed by coach Heather Nelson, breezed through the informal exhibition 6-0.

Nelson gave the alumni, all of whom she had coached in the past, much praise nonetheless.

"Seeing a lot of my former players is great," she said. "We're changing to be more of an attacking style, whereas we had concentrated more in the past on defense.

"Besides, we're training, and they're not."

The game drew sizeable numbers despite taking place at the same time and in the same city as the Louisville-Illinois game of the NCAA Final Four. Granted, some of the St. Louis crowd were there to watch the MISL team, the St. Louis Steamers, play the Philadelphia Kixx.

The event was extremely informal; the alumni didn't even bother to choose a coach.

"It's just good for all the alumni to get together," said Southeast assistant coach Beth Guccione, who played goalkeeper for the alumni. "We had fun."

The game was the idea of Nelson and Brian Roth, a Perry County Parks and Recreation official who helped arrange the preliminary contest for the Steamers-Kixx game. It marks Southeast's first-ever "alumni game" and brought exposure for the women, who mingled afterwards with Steamers members.

Alumni and current players alike were thrilled for the opportunity to play in a different kind of setting. Some of the women played in Savvis five years ago when the Redhawks played against Eastern Illinois in an exhibition. For some, it had been even longer.

"Three or four of us played here when it was the arena," said Southeast senior Marla Gianino, who played for the alumni. "I think we were about 10. It's actually a little harder because it's smaller."