I started this a week and a half ago and fortunately I started keeping notes. Better late than never right...kind of?? :-)
Well it looks like our between game bah-nanananas took a few minutes to take full effect Saturday (8/23), but once they did...well, it was possession domination, but we'll go over that later. Now to match number one of our double header.
We played a position/pass team and this can either be problematic for us or to our advantage. As I have mentioned before, we will be susceptible to breakaways and may get real backed up by a team if this occurs early on in a game. However, we played very attack aggressive, which put this particular team on their heels and tired them out quickly even though they put in the first point.
The coach of the other team kept asking his players to glide with us and take the ball away when we were off balance performing our deceptive dribbling. However, our girls are getting better at staying low, knees bent and on their toes, which really prevents them from being off-balance in the first place.
I had to give a game ball to Olivia for her tireless effort to perform her moves at speed. She had one pullback-play/behind near me, which made her look like she was gliding atop the grass...BUT...probably her biggest effort came from our pre-game chat. Olivia still struggles keeping her head up and recognizing her teammates around her. I actually had a picture to show her of what I meant, with her in it, where she was moving her teammate off of a ball. We chatted and and I asked her to really put in effort to keep her head up and move away from the ball if she saw a teammate with it, even if it originally cam off of her foot.
Well she did just that and for both games. I think I even recall her looking at me once when she moved away from a play to let me know she was working on it. The conclusion of all of this was on a drive she made deep into the offensive corner of the bench side where she had tried twice to get the ball towards goal without success by skirting the back line.
Her last attempt saw her take a big leap in her play. She looked up and saw Karoyln poaching right in front of the goalie, pushed it hard to her away from the back line, through two players for Karolyn to pop it into goal. Awesome!
We also had another thoughtful pass during this match, in which Elissa was making some moves and ended up being trapped on the sideline by two defenders. They closed in on her now knowing our possess the ball mentality. When up past their backs comes Maryah-Y who rather than call out for a pass, patiently kept her space and waited. Elissa popped her head up, saw Maryah and pushed it between the defenders for Maryah to keep moving the ball forward.
Maryah, like our other new girls had been accustomed to asking for the ball by saying "Pass" rather than just making sure they were in the right place as an available option. Also, by not saying anything, she did not alert the defenders to her presence. Big in-game step forward for both girls.
Overall, our girls continue to give no space through the middle of the field forcing other teams to respect the center line and stay on sides.
This broke down a bit in the first 10 minutes of match 2 and we got ourselves chasing the ball. Although as I said at the beginning, this was, in my mind, due to getting our legs back after a full game then playing against some fresh legs. We ended up down by three quickly, but our girls are doing great with not seeing points and just getting themselves back to playing. For the next 40 minutes, we had the ball minus a couple long kick breakaways, which were easily taken care of by Karolyn in goal.
It was so dead back by goal in the last 15 minutes of the first half that Maryah-Y did not touch the ball once, much to her dismay, but to the delight of her parents (or so I hear!)
Karolyn summed up this game to me by a footnote she recapped after the game where she was bringing the ball up from our defensive half and had one defender on her with another in waiting. The 2nd defender told her teammate to "Just KICK the ball!" to which the teammate replied, "It's NOT that easy!" Exactly!! It is never easy against everyone of our players in a 1v1 situation!
Caitlyn, Mariyah-I and Kenzie received game balls for their in game efforts.
Mariyah is still not comfortable with having the ball at her feet in game and kicks it away immediately. I told her during a substitution she must get at least 5 touches before giving it away from now on. Reluctantly at first she moved with 2, then 3 touches...then all of a sudden the ball was getting more than five touches and she ended up with a couple shots on net; one even getting neat ping sound as she hit a corner post. She then did an even better thing than just dribbling...she followed her shot and almost got one in the net.
Caitlyn also has a tendency to get rid of the ball even though she has really good footwork and agility. She never ceases to surprise though as she grabbed a ball in our defensive half drove straight through the middle of the field, beat three defenders and put one into the back of the net. It wasn't a drive full of maradonas or puskas moves, but one full of ball control, slight head fakes and light direction changes and sometimes, that's all it takes.
Kenzie, is super comfortable with the ball and I can tell she enjoys being challenged by defenders when they are up close. Although she got into a bit of a pickle with three defenders down in one of our offensive corners. For what seemed like 90 seconds, they went back and forth. She would do a few moves, get them off balance and start to break away when a stray leg would push the ball slightly away. What got her the game ball was her attitude during this event. She never gave up and kept going after the ball. So much so, at one point, I heard a lion roar from a quiet mouse as she growled out in frustration over the situation, then she grabbed the ball back and went back at it again.
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