District Cup 2008 recap - 2nd place finish!!!!

If you told any of the girls last week that they would be playing Sunday for 1st place, they would have laughed. I'm sure many of the parents would have coughed up a lung, also.

In fact, as we practiced the last 2 weeks leading up to the tournament, many of the girls felt we were going to lose badly (their words exactly). But from the improvement I saw at the last 4-5 practices, I knew we would fare better than that. In fact, I expected us to do well, and I told the girls that. But even I couldn't have predicted doing as well as we did.

I know for a fact that several of the girls think we "suck" as a team with some even mentioning joining other teams. I think this tourney showed we don't suck and that we can be as good as we want to be.

Finishing 2nd out of 8 teams in the Silver bracket is a great accomplishment. I know for a fact that the SASC Radicals practice all year around with little exception and are part of a larger soccer club. The Radicals practice together with their sister club that plays in the A division of Class 3 (I play with their assistant coach). They play indoor and Futsal in the winter and numerous tournaments the rest of the year. So we have nothing to hang our heads about. We gave them a game and if you take away 10 minutes of the 2nd half, we were in a position to win the tournament.

Anyways, here is my brain fried recall of the events of the weekend that was District Cup 2008:

Game 1 vs. WV Cougers
1-0 (Tori w/assist from Elle)
This was a very close game that could have gone either way. We have played this team twice already in league play, both 1-1 ties. They have one girl that has the skill to break down a defender, but we held her in check for most of the game and won the game on a "back of the head" header from Tori off of a great cross from her big Sis. It was enough to hold up for a 1-0 win and a great start to the weekend (except for the 8am start).

Game 2 vs. Santa Clara Sporting
1-0 (Tori, with double assist from Chelsea and Kiara)
Just looking at their regular season results, I thought this was the team to beat in our group. As with all the games, very close and could have gone either way. But we scored what was probably one of our best goals so far as a comp team. Chelsea won possession just on our side of midfield. She quickly fed a thru ball down the wing to Kiara. The Sporting sweeper came out to intercept, but played right into Kiara's trap. Kiara poked the ball around her as the sweeper flew by. The sweeper even tried to clip Kiara as she went by, but Kiara managed to stay on her feet. She then sent a perfect pass to Tori who was all alone at the penalty spot. Tori trapped it, and calmly put a shot to the left of the keeper, who was frozen in her net. Textbook.

Game 3 vs. Mt. Hamilton United
3-1 (Nicole 2, Elle - don't recall the assists on this game, sorry)
A win and we were in the finals. A loss and we could have finished 3rd in the division. You'd think a 2-0 start would give you a better outlook than that, but that's tournament soccer.
Just seconds after the kickoff and Faith sent the ball down the line to Christina. Christina then fed a cross into the box and Nicole put it away off the crossbar and down into the goal for a very quick 1-0 lead. Good back and forth before a failed clearance by us allowed the United to equalize in the 2nd half. A tie would still have put us through in hindsight because the 4 points were enough to put us ahead of Sporting, who then could only tie us with a max point win (3-0) with us holding the head to head tiebreaker. But a 2 goal outburst in the last 5 minutes made the point moot as we finished group play undefeated.

Game 4 vs. SASC Radicals
2-4 (Lauren, Nicole)
This is the team that beat us 3-2 a few weeks back but many of our girls were ill and the Bennett girls were absent. This lead to my personal optimism that we would fare much better on this rematch. However, they had a few solid players that weren't in that first match also. We took a surprising 2-0 lead with 2 scrappy goals by Lauren and Nicole in the first half. The Radicals cut the lead to 1 just minutes before half time on a nice shot from about 25 yards out.

We started the 2nd half with the Bennett/Kiara front line and created no less than 5 great chances that we could not finish. I was certain we would score at least one more goal in the 2nd half the way we were playing. However, a ball that our girls thought was going out of bounds hit the hillside and miraculously stayed in bounds. As we watched, one of their girls kept running and tracked the ball down. She sent a cross from the sideline that went into the upper far corner that Diana had no chance at, even if she were 6-5 tall. Tie game.

At that point, you could see the wind come out of the girls sails. Momentum is a tough thing to turn. This is when you wish you could call a time out to regroup. I told the girls at halftime that the team that wanted it the most will win this game. Well, I guess we know the answer to that one. The Radicals had a very strong midfield that dominated both defensively and offensively once they tied the score.

That goal changed the momentum completely. For the next 10 minutes, it was all Radicals as we just ran out of gas and out of time. Great effort by all and a fantastic 2nd place finish that we can now boast on our team page.

Considering we only have 1 win in our previous 11 or so games going back to Spring, winning 3 in a row this weekend was a stretch to say the least. But as I told the team, we have been so close in all our games. Now that we've shown that we can win, let' see if we can now transfer this to league play and finish the Fall season strong!

Thanks for all the fan support from the parents and we'll see you at practice.

Dan