The countdown is on to the Union's 2013 season. With training camp under way at the Dewey O. Boster Sports Complex in Deltona, Fla., the club opens its preseason at 6 p.m. Saturday against the Orlando City Soccer Club.
The match begins 2 weeks of group play as a part of the 2013 Disney Pro Soccer Classic, which is being held at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World. The Union is one of six MLS teams to participate in the 2-week event, along with Orlando City, of USL Pro, and the Tampa Bay Rowdies, of the North American Soccer League.
Group A will contain the Union, Orlando City, Toronto FC and the Columbus Crew. Group B consists of Tampa Bay, D.C. United, the Montreal Impact and Sporting Kansas City.
Matches will be played on Saturday, Wednesday and Feb. 16, with the championship game on Feb. 23.
The Union also will participate in two other preseason events while in Florida. The first is a game at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 15 against the Montreal Impact at EverBank Field in Jacksonville. The second is a scrimmage against D.C. United at 6 p.m. on Feb. 20 in Deltona.
The 2012 season was one of struggle, but also possible optimism for Union fans. After a 2-7-2 start under manager Peter Nowak, John Hackworth was named the interim team manager on June 13, after Nowak was let go, and was named permanent team manager on Aug. 30. Hackworth led the Union to a 8-11-4 record after taking over.
According to Hackworth, the club is progressing through training camp with set ideas in mind. "I've said this before. We have a plan that we're progressively going through during the preseason," he said.
Hackworth also discussed how the team has looked throughout training camp, saying that it has been difficult, but rewarding early on.
"In general, our first sessions here have been really good. The training part and effort of all the players has been excellent," he said. "We do think we're still making a lot of progress. We're putting in some long, hard days, which are a challenge mentally to recover from."
For the preseason, Hackworth wants his players to transfer what they are learning in camp to ingame scenarios.
"We have six games here and what we want to do is slowly build up all the players here, so that they can take what we're doing in training and build that into a game," Hackworth said. "We want to build them up, so that at the end of this camp, we feel like they're ready to play 90 minutes."