Still Rolling

We had two conference games this week, but before those games we had to get through quite possibly the worst soccer practice I have ever been a part of as a coach. I don't know if our players were overcome by all that is Monday, if we were full of ourselves for having won so easy the previous week or if the weather was changing but there were way too many poor attitudes and missing players to accomplish much. After "surviving" Monday's practice I was not sure what to expect at Tuesday's game.

Our opponent actually got to our home field before us and as soon as we saw them it was apparent that they were a small team. Small- as in needing to dig down to the 4th grade to field 10 kids. We agreed to play with 10 kids on our side and scored 3 goals in the first 5 or so minutes. We moved our line-up around and subbed in some younger players and scored once more before halftime. In the second half we moved all of our girls up front and they attacked with reckless abandon- but were unable to punch one through, although they did have several shots barely miss. We picked up one more goal to finish with a 5-0 victory.

Thursday's opponent was a tad bigger school with a couple bigger players (including one that our players thought was a coach - oh the irony). The first half we had numerous scoring opportunities foiled by offside calls (legitimate calls) and some good goalkeeping by their big guy. We did manage one goal to hold a 1-0 lead at halftime. The second half it took about ten minutes for our forwards to finally get their act together and score twice to put us up 3-0 with 15 minutes to go. Within 5 minutes we added our last goal and then switched up our line-up to get other kids a shot at scoring, but were unable to get another goal (though we had a couple great chances including a shot off the post). Our goalie (who never touched the ball in our first game and got three saves/touches in the second game) finished with 6 saves and had a great move rushing at a forward and causing him to wildly miss another shot.

So, we are 3-0 and 2-0 in conference and it appears our schedule is getting harder as we go, which is a good thing. We are learning some good things about spacing and using teammates, but still have a lot of room for improvement.