Tortillas, empty plastic bottles — who knows. Despite the uncertainty of fan conduct, a battle for home-field advantage is set.
The Cal Poly men’s soccer team (8-9-1, 6-3-0 Big West) will take on rival UC Santa Barbara Gauchos (12-3-1, 6-1-0) Wednesday night, not only for bragging rights, but for a chance to host a conference playoff game.
The ‘Blue-Green Rivalry’, as it’s been deemed, often draws record-setting crowds. Last year in a televised matchup, it took two overtimes before the Gauchos defeated the Mustangs 1-0 in front of a sold-out crowd of 11,075. The game featured tortilla Frisbees and even a bottle thrown at the Gauchos goalkeeper.
This year at Harder Stadium in Santa Barbara there were 5,842 fans attending but they were no less rowdy. Tortillas bearing derogatory messages in permanent marker flew from the Santa Barbara fans onto the field hitting Cal Poly fans, players and the referees.
Senior forward Daniel Cumming said he enjoys the crowd and the energy they bring.
“I want people to come out in the thousands, the more the merrier,” he said. “More adrenaline kicks in as more people watch you. You just want to put on a good show.”
The Gauchos are currently ranked first in the Big West Conference while the Mustangs are second after a 2-0 loss to UC Davis (6-12-1, 3-5-1) on Saturday. Prior to the match the Mustangs were tied with the Gauchos for the Big West title.
The Mustangs fourth-year head coach Paul Holocher said the team had an off game at Davis but that they’re trying to put it behind them. The team has specifically been focusing both on its combination play (passing and team work) and its defense, Holocher said.
“We came out flat against Davis,” he said. “We didn’t have the level of concentration we needed. But you can’t concentrate on the what-ifs; you have to focus on what’s ahead.”
The Gauchos are a physical, aggressive and athletic team that needs to be limited in the time they have the ball, Holocher said.
“We’ve been talking a lot about pressuring the ball,” Cumming said. “Right when we lose it we try to get it back. When we have the ball, we just worry about what we have to do, not what they’re doing.”
In their Oct. 7 match, the Gauchos controlled the ball for the first half allowing only one Cal Poly shot on goal. That changed in the second half when the Mustangs attacked the goa five times. Both the Mustangs junior goalkeeper Patrick McLain and Gauchos keeper Sam Hayden recorded five saves by the end of the game.
Senior forward Jose Garcia said that leadership will play a big part in the game, especially for the younger members of the team.
“It’s not good to be too nervous,” Garcia said. “It’s hard for freshmen to step up to play in front of 10,000 people. We don’t want it to be mental for them, we just want them to perform.”
For Cumming, Garcia and the other seniors on the team, this could potentially be their last home game as Mustang soccer players.
“(The seniors) were here from day one with Coach Holocher,” Garcia said. “We’ve tried to turn around the program. We only have a few more games to get Cal Poly on the map. This is one of the last games where we can keep turning the program.”
The Mustangs will have a spot in the conference playoffs, but whether or not they will host a team at Alex G. Spanos Stadium will be decided by their performance on Wednesday at 7 p.m.
As the T-shirts circulating campus say, the second-ranked Mustangs will be trying to “Buck the Gauchos” off their first place spot in the Big West Conference.