Well, the 2 Saturday games are over and we walked into a buzzsaw 😀Â
The first team was a travel team from Dallas that just finished winning a Disney sponsored 3v3 national tournament. 11-0 was the final, but we had long stretches where we played them even.
The 2d game was against the best Division 1 team in KC. They beat us last year 23-0. This year the score was 10-1.
At halftime, down 8-0, Â we installed a new defensive scheme and decided that our aim for the remainder of the tournament was to focus on man to man defense, and raising our intensity on the defensive side. The girls responded wonderfully and played the 2d half at a much higher intensity, giving up 2 and scoring 1. Like night and day.
Defense  hasn’t been a direct focus of ours as we are still working lot of fundamentals of footskills and offense. Made a lot of progress today.   The girls spirits remained high and in the 2d half we actually made considerable progress, and I think have had an important breakthrough in their understanding of the game and working as a team.
We are a low Division 2 /high Division 3 team and I have viewed the tournament as a reward for a great indoor season of hard work and as a challenge to the girls to play against some really great teams.
We are installing the attitude in the girls that in soccer things never go according to plan, and that the most important thing to do is to decide what to do next based on where you are. Keep moving and thinking and supporting your team. Van Tharp calls that respondability.
We are having fun and working hard in soccer; more importantly these girls are developing the spirit and mental toughness to be able to face the next challenge, fearing nothing and going for it! So very proud of them, and of our parents who understand these lessons. Tomorrow, our focus will be on not passing the ball to the other team so much. 😀