Fresh off his impressive hat-trick against the University of Illinois-Chicago on Sunday, freshmen forward Phil Doeh spared a minute of his busy schedule to answer some questions. The nationally #22 ranked Badgers are currently 5-1 and can attribute much of their early success to the play of Doeh and the other young, talented players.
The Daily Cardinal: I'd like to open it up by just asking what you've thought about the season thus far, both as a team and individually?
Phil Doeh: Coming into the season I didn't really know what to expect. We have a really young team and the training camps went great, a lot better than I expected. [The] Rocky Roccoco Tournament we played outstanding; we got off to the right start. On Friday we let one slip away from us, but I think we bounced back on the right track and I think from here on we've learned our lesson not to take any teams lightly and we just gotta worry about what we can control and things will fall together.
DC: What's the transition been like going from high school soccer to the college level?
PD: It's been a huge transition. In high school a lot of stuff wasn't taken seriously ... but now I've developed my game to another level. Before I used to just kick and run and now I've put skill to it. So I can still do that, but use it in a good way instead of just kick and run.
DC: How about just making the transition from high school to college in general? Balancing soccer and school must be pretty difficult.
PD: It's been good. If you're going to do any college sport, you have to expect that. It shows your character if you can handle it or if you can't. I supposedly can, you know. The coaching staff makes sure that we go to study halls and we have tutors; so the resources are there. If you want it, use it.
DC: Have you guys been making any special preparations for your upcoming game against UW-GB on Wednesday?
PD: Nothing new; I mean we just come out here and practice. That's all we can control. Us being ranked 22 in the nation and third in the region really doesn't matter to me. That's just all publicity. What we do here in practice is what we carry into the game and so far we've been doing a lot of good stuff in practice. I think we're ready.
DC: Has it been tough maintaining focus with all the hype surrounding you guys, especially as a freshman?
PD: It was good to hear it, but I mean I've been in a lot tougher situations where I've been on really good teams and with really good programs. I know how to handle it. Yeah it's nice, but you know we can't stop here; it's early in the season.
Our team's got big goals. We wanna make it to the tournament and we wanna win our conference. So, that's just a little acknowledgement right now. But we gotta build on that so that it gets better and better as we get down the road.
