Week Three Highlights

The Spiders faced a tough opponent this week so most of our best moments were on defense. Brennen, Noah, Lucas and Jill all showed great progress in knowing how to hustle back on defense to cover the goal. Xavier was a constant threat in offense again this week as was Noah. It was also great to see Jeremy back out on the field playing hard. Karolyn had a fabulous goal this week. Making a beautiful run from midfield, she out paced the defenders around her and put the ball right in the center of the goal.

I apologize to everyone for getting the start time for the U6 Seals wrong on my schedule. I'm double checking that schedule to make sure there are no other errors. Starting out the game down a few players didn't seem to upset the Seals at all. We had Kaleb in goal the first quarter with Alex and Justin on the wings and Owen and Kevin sharing the center position. They did a great job of maintaining their positions and the result was a barrage of goals. Alex had three goals total, his first off of a beautiful pass from Justin. After that goal Alex and Justin made sure I knew that Justin had made the pass. It's great to see that they are getting the thrill of working together.
Justin had a goal of his own and Owen and Kaleb had two and three goals respectively.
After Kaleb's first, a left footed tap-in which was the direct result of playing his position and being in the right place at the right time, Kaleb asked me if he could stop playing his position (left wing) and "just go wherever I want". When I said no his response was "aww maaan!" But then he went on to score two more goals.
Despite being in the thick of it constantly Kevin didn't come away with a goal but he did play really well. Once he gets the hang of playing away from the ball he'll be scoring more often. That is what I'll be working on with Maddie and Kendall too. They are both aggressively attacking the ball but they tend to get stuck in the pile. Kendall has made so much progress and she clearly loves to play. As I was setting the team up for the third quarter Kendall announced to everyone that "we're going to play like a team and use team work". Maddie was great during her stint in goal and made one very smart run out of the box to clear the ball away.

The Sapphire Bullets had a good game as a team in a 2-2 tie. Avery had both of our goals this game and I think one of them was even off of her left foot. Both goals were strong kicks from several yards out. We had really great play from everyone and I saw a lot of the ideas and techniques we had been working on in practice put into use in this game. Specifically I want to note Erika's play in defense where she did a great job of controlling the ball before clearing it out. Lauren was fabulous this game, dashing into the goal repeatedly and staying ahead of the ball just as we'd practiced. Jake was solid in goal for us the second half making several good stops. The goal Purple did put in against Jake was so high I couldn't have stopped it. I also want to mention Kathryn and David who have been playing mostly fullback for us. Before they got to go in in the first half they stood on the bench watching intently, comparing notes on how our defense should be playing and asking me lots of questions about how to play the position. As a coach you have to love having players like that on your team. Hopefully the weather will be good Saturday and we can get another practice in.