Last Thursday, we suffered a tough loss to Mary Washington. The game itself was not that bad, however the scoreboard didn’t reflect how we played. The scoreboard showed 5-0, but to be honest, I think it should’ve been a 1-0 game. Since this was our first loss on the season, it was kinda tough, but we quickly bounced back, and prepared ourselves for the games to come.
This past weekend, we had our Second Annual Mapp Invitational, a tournament where we invite three other teams to come play on our field. On Saturday, we played St.Vincent College, a team that we didn’t know much about ahead of time, so we came our ready to play our best. We ended up doing just that, bringing our “a” game, and using what we learned from the Mary Wash. game to step up our game. We ended up winning the game against St. Vincent 7-0, meaning we had made it to the championship game which was to be played on Sunday at 3:00.
After our game, Coach made us stay for the first half of the Drew College vs. Sweet Briar game to see who we were going to play. At the end of the first half, Drew had a 3-0 lead, so we made the assumption that we would be playing them in the championship game. We watched them closely, and made sure to note the abilities of each player, especially the things that stood out.
The next day it was time to put those notes to good use. We had a good long speech in the locker room from Coach about the importance of winning this game, and the ways that would allow us to do so. Always move to the ball, make good passes, shoot whenever you have a chance, etc. From the first whistle, we worked harder than ever, and managed to pull away with a 3-0 lead at halftime. However, knowing the abilities of Drew, we had a feeling they fight hard to make a come back. Sure enough, they scored three goals before the end of regulation, making the game a 3-3 tie and sending us into overtime. By this point, everyone was exhausted and somewhat frustrated that we had allowed them to make that come back, but we knew it would be worth it to give overtime everything we had.
We had a couple opportunities during overtime and got a couple of shots off, but we couldn’t manage to get them in the goal. With only 7 people on the field in overtime, it made it hard on everyone; it’s a good thing we have a lot of depth so that whenever someone needed a break they could be taken out. Despite our hard work in overtime, we couldn’t manage to score, so this meant that we would play another 15 minutes of play called “Sudden Death”, meaning that the first team to score would win. Both teams fought very hard, but the 15 minutes ended and still no one had scored. From that point, the only thing left to decide the game was strokes, a one on one shot, sort of similar to a penalty kick in soccer.
We picked five people from our team to take the strokes, as well as the other team. Our goalie Biz made some great saves, preventing the other team from scoring, and we were able to get some shots past the Drew goalie. All of our hard work paid off, and we ended up winning 4-3, and so our record improved to 4-1. ODAC games start this weekend, so we will have to work extremely hard this week to prepare ourselves for Virginia Wesleyan.
--Kristen
P.S. CONGRATULATIONS CHRISTINA FOR BEING ODAC PLAYER OF THE WEEK!!!
