Unbeaten, Evolving, and Trusting the Process

By IAIN KING

Trust the process, focus every day on being better than yesterday.

At the midpoint of another AUS season, CBU CAPERS Head Coach Deano Morley is happy with what he has seen in the six games to date, but he is way more excited about what lies ahead. Morley's CAPERS have an unbeaten record of 4-0-2 and lie four points behind early leaders St Mary's, who they face at Ness Timmons Field on Sunday, with two games in hand.

"The reflections are that I am very happy with where we are in the process and that's a word I use every year. Process," reveals Deano as he gears up for Friday night's home clash with Memorial. "This is the first phase, there are players joining us from other provinces, other countries, other cultures, different religions and footballing philosophies. You need time to bring people together, to form a team and they have to learn about our winning habits, our discipline, our accountability and behaviours."

Within the CAPERS camp there was a tacit agreement that the glittering Ring Ceremony staged by the University to celebrate the second Canadian crown in Morley's 10-year stint at the helm was the full stop on the celebrations of that memorable USPORTS triumph on home soil. Now it's about what happens next with a restructured team who have 11 new signings settling into life on campus.

"Elsewhere I have heard talk of repeats and all that, but we don't do that inside this place, we just focus on being better than yesterday," Deano stresses. "We are integrating new players; we are grounded and humble and I don't think any of our national title winners even remember winning it or dwell on it now. We are looking at what's next, we are dealing with adversity, some bad calls that have been given against us, getting through it. We're winning points from behind, we've won all three games on the road, there are many positive signs that tell me we have the character to have a good run at this."

Such are the demands of the program, and the culture created now at CAPERS that back-to-back 1-1 home ties with Dalhousie and Acadia earlier this month stung badly. Those setbacks sparked increased intensity on the training field, a search for answers, a quest to improve again.

"The games we tied at home were both incredibly unlucky in my eyes," the CAPERS Head Coach insists. "I felt we could have put them both away and that 4-1 or 5-1 wouldn't have flattered us. They weren't, though, and we have to learn from that and scoring three away at a tough Moncton side last weekend showed that. Players are getting healthy, developing our habits and they are adjusting to the mental stress of being a student-athlete."

Coach Morley lost many of the influential players from the previous season and has overseen the development of a new leadership group. Max Piepgrass, Jason Hartill, Sebastian Cochrane, Elijah Le, Mateo Goldsztein and keeper Daniel Clarke are finding their voices, driving standards.

"They have been excellent, they have stepped up to fill a void left by those we lost and they are setting a tone," reveals Deano. "From the new players I am sure every coach in the league now knows who Harvey Hughes is and I know we have other pieces who are getting sharper. I'm more excited about where we are going than where we have been at so far."

Deano welcomes the development of every Atlantic program and salutes the coaching colleagues who are pushing our Conference forward now. "I am a coach who says every year that AUS is one of the toughest conferences in the country," he reasons. "There are no easy games home or away and we face good coaches and good teams who are well organised and this year the standard has gone up again.

"Everyone we have played this year has been better. Acadia were extremely well organised, Dalhousie were more dangerous and Mount A had more about them. UPEI too are always tough to crack. All of the teams we have seen have taken a step forward."