Hopefully everyone had a better weekend that your humble Dynamo blogger had thanks to a wonderful cold that kept me basically incapacitated for the better part of the last four days...but enough about me.
The Houston Dynamo completed their first week of pre-season training and resume their schedule today. The Dynamo will practice everyday except Wednesday, leading up to their scrimmage on Saturday against Houston Baptist University. This will be the team's second scrimmage, after having played the Dynamo Academy U-18 squad last week. Highlights from the scrimmage include Alex Dixon playing in a holding midfield position and Academy signing Josue Soto getting three assist. You can read a full report from the scrimmage here.
The team's pre-season schedule gets much busier as we move in to February with a scrimmage against FC Dallas on the 12th that kicks off a schedule of seven scrimmages in 15 days in three different cities. You can see the full pre-season schedule here. It's an aggressive and hectic schedule, but with all the new players to integrate and a lot of decision to be made about who will start and play where, the large amount of match time will benefit the team and coaches in the end.
Former Dynamo goalkeeper Pat Onstad had a thank you letter posted via the Chronicle's website. If you haven't had a chance to read Onstad's letter yet, I recommend you take a minute and do so.
Matthew Doyle from MLSSoccer offers his thoughts on why the move to the Eastern Conference will benefit the Dynamo.
Finally, the Dynamo are preparing to roll out their new marketing plan which will be centered around the theme: "This is your stadium". The campaign will include TV, radio, billboard and more, with an eye towards introducing consumers to the new stadium which will be opening in 2012. Take a look at the Dynamo Marketing PDF and you can get a look at what the front office has planned for marketing the team and the new stadium.