1/12 Rosemount League vs Eagan U13

"Growing up, I was always the small guy, I couldn't beat people with my strength. My eyes and my mind have to do most of the work."
-Wayne Gretzky

After last nights scrimmage and this mornings training session I was very excited to watch us play again.  Last week we played a 2-3-2 and this week we switched to a 3-3-1 because it is more similar to the formation we will be running this Spring.

In what has been a recurring theme in the first 5-10 minutes of the last three games we have played we got stuck in our end.  It is not because we have come out flat, but because we try to pass and dribble out of the back a lot and we lose it and get stuck back there.  I am ok with us dribbling out and passing out of the back, I encourage it, but we do have to start to recognize when we should clear the ball and get out of our end.  I would classify the first 5 minutes of each half as one of those times.

5 minutes in the Eagan forward won the ball from us, dribbled down the middle and scored.  We had some confusion in the back about who should step to the ball.  We still need to work on our communication.

After they scored we started to play a little better and began advancing the ball forward.  20 minutes in Mad Dog won their goalies punt by playing it first time to Blitz and made a through run.  Blitz returned the favor to Mad Dog and she slotted the tying goal home.

At half time we talked about shooting from distance again because we had plenty of opportunities to do it.  If we can start doing that, we will be able to pass more close to their goal.  We also talked about our communication and how important it is.

1 minute into the second half Eagan "scored" their second goal of the game.  I put that in quotations because the ball was never close to actually crossing the line.  Their outside mid ran onto a half cleared ball from us and hit a great shot that forced AJ into a great save where she deflected it of the post.  After it hit the post the ball came straight out to her and she punted it away.  But for some reason the ref decided to award them a goal.  Bad call, oh well life goes on.

After that we created a ton of chances and had two goals called back for offsides.  The second offsides call seemed as if the refs actually had it in for us, but the D League at Rosemount is a great time to get used to calls you disagree with and learn to play on.

With 5 minutes left the ball was played into Jordy who turned and found Blitz on the far side of the box.  Blitz cracked a first time shot into the upper corner to tie the game.

We kept pressing for the winner and had the second offsides goal that I mentioned but we could not put in the final goal.

Final Score 2-2

The girls suggested moving to 3 MVP's for each game and I agreed with them so the 3 MVP's were: Blitz for her goal, assist, and hard tackles.  Bella for her overlap runs from outside back.  AJ for her great play in goal.