Training - Thursday, June 14

On Monday I was reminded that the MN Lightning (Minnesota's W-League team) was playing against Ft Wayne on Thursday night at Elizabeth Lyle Robbie Stadium in St Paul.  ELR Stadium is one of the premier college soccer facilities in the country and home to the Gopher Women's team.  I called up Mikki (University of Minnesota's Women's Head Coach) to see if I could get the girls to train at the facility prior to watching the Lightning game (scheduled to begin at 7PM that night).  She hooked me up with the Facilities Director there and we scrambled to get things organized. 

Mikki was out of town on a recruiting trip, but Assistant Coach Kate Cortis was gracious enough to meet the Bangu girls at the stadium at 5:30PM to give us a tour of the stadium.

Kate took the girls up to the stadium press box and down to the Gopher's locker room.  It was cool for the girls to see a bit of the Gopher soccer team's history in pictures in the press box, as well as to see the college girls official lockers and the "Future Gophers" name tags.  It's a good bet that there are some future Gophers in this group. 

It was a hot day, but I wanted to get in a little training.  I just set up some 4v4 small sided games and help a mini tournament for 30 minutes or so.  It was good for the girls to get on the thick grass on the training field there as we will likely see this type of surface next weekend in Iowa. 

We then sat under the shade of a huge tree in the parking lot to eat pizza, then headed into the Stadium to watch the Lightning.

Fun session...

See more photos here.