It Finally Comes Together!

95G White played brilliantly on Sunday, downing the GFRL Fusion 3-0 at Lucketts. We've been working very hard on pressuring the ball, using our bodies more, and being more physical. The girls' effort in practice showed on the field, as they dominated every facet of the game.

Jessica Wyker earned the first captains' armband by creating some dangerous scoring opportunities, making some excellent attacking runs from the flank. Polly Healy earned the second captains' armband by playing terrific defense and scoring the game winning goal after receiving Rachelle Delle-Fratte's corner kick. Kylie Fleming had the clean sheet in goal. Kylie had two nice saves in the 0-0 first half, but went largely untested in the 2nd half behind strong defensive play from Cate Coughter, Janna Steadman, Rachelle, and Polly. Annie Bokulic kept up her stong play this season with our second goal, and Megan Kyte completed the scoring by nailing a strong left-footed shot after a mishandle by the keeper. Everyone had their best match of the year - by far. What fun it was to watch that level of skill combined with great effort!

95G White stands 1-1 in ODSL play heading into this weekend's matchup with Loudoun 95G Silver, 1:30 PM at Lucketts. More importantly, the girls tallied 11 Maggie Moo points this week, just 9 points short of our goal.

Yummy Bake Sale!

Thanks to everyone who participated in yesterday's Bake Sale at the Sterling Walmart, and a special thanks to our organizers - the Alexanders and the Bokulics.

Yesterday's event netted $311 for the team.

ODSL Game 1

95G White traveled to Faquier County yesterday (some of us took more circuitous routes than others) for a 3-1 defeat at the hand of the FCSC Thunder.

We discussed two keys in our pregame meeting. First, we needed to rely on our footskills and not regress into kick & run soccer. Second, we needed to not back down to an opponent who was physically bigger than we are. On the first, we did a reasonable job of using our footskills, although our first touches let us down a number of times. We did not do a good job, however, of standing up physically to our opponent, which ultimately cost us the game. Our post-game messages were that:

1) A player who uses her body to win the ball will always beat a player who only tries to win the ball with a foot.

2) Collisions are part of soccer. In a collision situation, the player who tries to back down from a collision is always the one who gets hurt -- not the person that initiates a collision.

Short story -- while we will always continue to work on improving our technical skills, we also need to improve our aggressiveness and level of physical play.

Janna Steadman earned a captains' armband for this week with some strong defensive play. Kylie Fleming earned the second captains' armband for scoring our lone goal of the match. Annie Bokulic, Polly Healy, and Cate Coughter played strong games as well.

Saturday Bake Sale

The bake sale is still on for this Sat. April 5th at the Sterling Walmart. We have adjusted the times due to our 10am game. We will begin our bake sale at 1pm and end around 5pm. Due to space restrictions, we need to divide the girls into 2 two hour shifts--1-3pm and 3-5pm.

Please contact Peggy Bokulic or Karen Alexander to let them know when you can supply sales people for the event.

Thanks to Peggy & Karen for keeping on top of this event!

Spring '08 -- Off and Running

95G White competed in the FPYC Liberty Cup to warm up for the Spring ODSL Season. Although the girls didn't get to the finals, we were able to take several positives out of the event.

First, the team had a positive goal differential, scoring 9 and giving up only 5. We've used our limited practice time to work on our pressure/cover/balance defensively, and it showed. The girls gave up more than one goal in only one game during the tournament. Second, the team learned a lot about playing under adversity as two players went down with injuries during day 1 and were unavailable during day 2. Down two players, the girls played the FPYC Strikers to a 1-0 loss, then defeated the CYA Fuego 2-1 in the afternoon.

Erin Windland led the team in goals, closely followed by Annie Bokulic. Both girls earned Captain's bands for next week's ODSL opening game, and both played some of the best soccer in their travel careers.

Even though we missed the finals, I'm very proud of the girls and the way they handled the injuries, poor fields, and crappy weather. We're looking forward to taking this weekend's momentum into our ODSL opener on Saturday, and we're looking forward to getting our injured kids back in one piece.

Game vs Loudoun 95G Silver

Reminder - Please wear your red uniforms for tomorrow's game vs the Silver team.

What I learned being captain - by Megan W

When I was captain I learned that I had to be a leader and responsible for the team. I was captain for the whole Manassas Battlefield Classic Tournament with Katie. Being captain was fun because I got to lead stretches and I had to get the team focused. I got the team focused by telling them the game strategy and the things we needed to work on. The strategy of the game was to focus on getting shots and getting the mids back. At practice, we worked on a 3 person passing drill which I saw during the game! Well from what I saw we played a terrific tournament!

Megan as Captain

2 weeks ago I was a captain. I learned that the captains don't do very much except for to tell our team mates to get back on the field after waterbreaks at practice. I think that when we're captain, we have to be better leaders and find other things to do. Maybe as captains we could tell the coaches what we think that the team needs to work on, and then suggest a drill to do at practice. That's what I learned about being a captain.

Katie & Polly as Captains

This past week we played against the Vienna Lighting team and Polly and I were captains. I think we did great and we all tried our very best! Anyway the game was tied 0 to 0 although we almost had 5 goals in the first half, and a couple more in the second half. And thanks to our goalies Kylie and Cate we were saved with a tie. I really love being captain, it is so much fun! And congratulations to our next 2 captains Megan K. and Janna. Thanks for a great game team, you all did great!!


-Katie