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Feddy Hall was featured on the NCAA Website in an interview with Kevin Scheitrum called The Busiest Man In The Business. Hall's 94 saves and .931 save percentage place him tops in the nation, two years after he led the country in the same two categories. We now bring you part one of the interview.
Shane Recklet says that the moment he saw Hall walk onto the field, he knew things would be different.
Hall was fast, sure, and he could jump, as high and as long as Recklet had ever seen, long and quick like the burst of hope and a smile stretching across a face.
And he sure smiled a lot, Hall did. Still does. Talked a lot, too.
"The first drill we did in the very first practice, basically everyone could tell the amount of talent this guy had," said Recklet, now a senior midfielder. "He had this confidence in himself, and he was a good communicator. A lot of people don't have that in their transition to being a new team. A new player, they're shy at first, that wasn't the case with Hall."
Recklet was a center-back in 2006, when Hall stepped onto the pitch at Quinnipiac after transferring out of South Florida. Hall couldn't play that first year, as he sat out due to transfer restrictions. But ever since then, he's played almost every minute in goal for Quinnipiac, molding himself into arguably the nation's most important - if not best - goaltender.
The Bermuda-born Hall, who transferred out of USF after seeing a few minutes of action in 2004 and sitting out due to injury in '05, currently sits atop the nation in both save percentage (.931) and raw saves-made (94). This, after he led the country in both categories in 2007. He's also fourth nationally in goals-against average (0.431). And he's perhaps the biggest reason why, heading into Northeast Conference-leading Quinnipiac's final three regular season games - including a matchup on Sunday with conference rival and No. 14 Monmouth - Quinnipiac (8-1-6, 5-0-2 NEC) have a legitimate shot at hosting their first-ever conference tourney and claiming their very first NEC title.
"He has the ability to jump from one side of the goal to the other," Recklet said. "He can just make game-saving saves that come out of nowhere.
"He's a huge part of every game," he continued. "He's a big part of why we win, why we're able to stay within teams, especially the bigtime teams we play."
Quantifying soccer goalies is a tough job. Goals-against average is, at the very best, a soupy hybrid between a goalie and his defense. Ninety minutes of shutout ball when a goalie faces one (or no) shots on goal still pares down the GAA as much as a goalie who makes 10 saves to get there.
For reference, Akron's freshman goalie David Meves leads the nation in GAA, putting up a .204 mark for a Zips defense that's on pace to break the NCAA's all-time mark for single-season goals-against average. In 15 games, he's made 22 saves.
Hall has made 94. An average of 6.26 per game. Meves didn't have to make his seventh save until Akron's fifth game of the year. As a sophomore in 2007, when Hall also led the nation in save percentage (.913), he averaged 7.38.
"When you have a great goalkeeper in goal and you limit them to shots a distance, Hall is just too good to let them in," said Quinnipiac head coach Eric Da Costa. "And when they're close, he doesn't let him either."
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