Team Update 2/18

Ladies,
fantastic job yesterday against the 91 Lady Lobos!
You played arguably the best 91 team in town in frigid conditions. You played against a howling wind in the first half - and going against the wind always fatigues a team worse than playing with the wind - which is why I always take the wind when given the choice at the coin toss. You played on after one of your players took a knock to the head - and scored a top class goal to boot.

There were a lot of good things to take away from the game. For one, the Lobos attempted to play 2 touch the entire game. That lasted about one minute as you guys kept them under too much pressure and they had to do more dribble possession. The several set pieces (corner kicks) we either had offensively or defended, you girls were very organized. They didn't even come close on any of their corners and of course, we scored off of a corner.

Because I played a lot of you out of position, I won't give you too many tactical comments. We need to work on fitness. We were flagging at about the 60 minute mark (10 minutes left in the game) and under a lot of pressure. Soccer fitness training involves a lot of sprints done over an extended period of time, because that's the kind of running we do in soccer - essentially 5 miles of sprinting over an 80 minute period!! The Lobos were more fit than we were but as they have D1 league they have to peak earlier. We have the luxury of being able to peak physically a bit later in the Spring - but we still need the work.

We also need to work on technical stuff. We could have passed and trapped much better as a group. Off the ball movement was lacking too. All this could be attributed to a lack of fitness - as you make more technical mistakes the more fatigued you are.

Anyway, a fine job on Saturday. We'll see you MOnday.


Sonny