2008 Midwest Regionals

Since winning State Cup a month ago it seems like the season has been going at super-speed building up to 2008 Midwest Regional Championships.  When we won State Cup, Regionals seemed like such a long ways off and the next thing we knew, it was here.

We had to adjust our schedule and change our priorities over the last month as we have prepared for Regionals meaning that; we gave some players time off during the NSC Cup combining with Dakota Rev, we withdrew from the AAG Tournament last weekend, but the big thing we did was shifting our priorities in league from trying to win it to trying to figure out the best places to play everyone for this tournament.

This is not to say that we did not try to win every league game we played since we won State Cup or that if we had not won State Cup our success this year would be based on whether or not we won the league.  What did happen was that winning the league went from being one of our big goals for the year to taking a back seat to preparing for this tournament.

This meant that I started to rotate players into positions that I believe will give us the best chance at Regionals.  In doing this I have taken some of our stronger attacking players and given them a lot of time back at defense because I believe we will be defending a lot this tournament and when we win the ball I want us to be able to keep it and attack quickly.  In doing this we have lost some of our attacking prowess in league, but a great benefit of this is that some of the girls who had not been scoring a lot of goals now were constantly in positions to be scoring.  Mack had 4 goals yesterday and Erika got her first goal of the year as well.

I also wanted to see which girls could finish close games for us and where I could play girls at the end of close games whether we were down a goal, tied, or up a goal.  So girls were playing in positions late in games that at the time may not have been their most comfortable positions.  I did not go with the same line up at the end of any of the close games as I wanted to really watch how all the girls would react in those situations. 

One of the things that I love most about this team is that they have a great belief that they are going to win every game that they are in, no matter what the score is and how late it is in the game.  As I watched the different girls close out games I could see that belief in all the girls.

With all of this rotating, all of the girls have played many different positions through the summer and as a result I think the girls are comfortable all over the field.  The girls getting used to reading different situations all over the field has really helped the girls to continue to develop as total soccer players and it has resulted in us playing some really good soccer in 3 of our last 4 games.  It has actually been really tough for me to decide who will play where at Regionals and I look at that as a very good thing because it means that the girls are not one dimensional players.

On June 10th the Regional Draw came out:

Here are the schedules and below are the groups.

Group A	Group B	Group C	Group D
#12 JB Marine	Bangu Tsunami	#7 Toro Booyah	#13 Javanon SC
#1 Carmel United	#22 CASA	#3 WC United	#25 KCFC Force
WDM Freedom	#2 St Louis SC	#15 Appleton Goal Getters	Rushmore Utd
#6 Michigan Hawks	#5 Eclipse Select

When the schedule matrix was released I saw that we were going to play CASA out of Ohio North first and I thought that's not too bad.  Then I saw we had St Louis SC and I said "Ouch."  As I looked at our last game and saw that we had the Illinois State Cup Champs Eclipse for our last game I said "Ouch" again.

Game #1 vs CASA Black from Cleveland, Ohio #22 in the Region
I don't know anything about CASA, but Ohio Premier is one of the top teams in the nation and before their State Cup started many people had picked them as the favorites to win the Region.  But they were knocked out in the Ohio North State Cup so I like that we are matched up against CASA instead of having to face Ohio Premier.

Game #2 vs St Louis SC-Wipke #12 in the Nation and #2 in the Region
I saw this team last year with the current U13's down at Cincinnati.  We tied them 2-2 and they were good.  Really good.  They were fast and skilled and I can only imagine that they have gotten better since last year.  I think St Louis can win the Region so this will be a very tough game.

Game #3 vs Eclipse Select #20 in the Nation and #5 in the Region
Any team who comes out of Illinois is a good team and they had to beat all the teams that I have seen to get here.  This is the first time this Eclipse has won a major event so they must be coming together at the right time.  They have a couple of very dangerous forwards so we will have our hands full.

So how do I think we are going to do?

Realistically we could get killed in every game and I have prepped the parents for this possibility.  This is a tournament where goals matter and with us being a U12 team the other teams will be looking to put up big numbers on us to help their goal differential. However, on the other hand, nothing surprises me with this group.  I did not expect to win State Cup but I was not shocked when they actually did it. 

The only way to describe how I feel about this group came to me when I was watching Tiger Woods last weekend in the US Open.  (Disclaimer: in no way am I saying that this team is as good as Tiger Woods.) There were times when he had some really impossible shots to make and as the announcers were talking about how difficult the shot was, he would hit the shot perfectly and the announcers would respond with something along the lines of "Well I guess with Tiger, that is not an impossible shot.  It is just another shot to him."

Going into the tournament the girls fully believe that they can win it and I love their confidence.  Because of that confidence and belief in themselves we may actually get a result in one of the games and it would not surprise me one bit.

No matter what happens this is going to be a great experience for all the girls and help us with our goal of representing Minnesota again next year at the U13 Regionals again.