To be completely honest, Premier to me doesn't mean much in and of itself.  For the things that I want my team to accomplish regionally, attaching "Premier team" to the girls mean that much.

What I am interested in now is finding challenging competition for the girls every time we step on the field, and the best way to do this here in Minnesota for us is to play up an age group at the most competitive playing level.  At U14 and above, that means playing Premier, so my goal for the team this summer was to try and put ourselves in the position to qualify for six-team Premier league for next year.

To do this, we either had to 1) win the East District outright as four out of the six 2007 U14 Premier teams would be the East, West, North, and South District league winners, or 2) come in second in the East District and then outlast two out of the other four second-seeds from each district as the final two Premier slots were awarded to the two second-seeds that advanced furthest in the end of the summer District/State Tournament. 

I have no problem saying this now, but I didn't think we stood much of a chance of winning the East District.  I didn't think we could beat the Renegades and thought we'd have our hands full with a big, strong, athletic White Bear Lake team.  I know, I know, I should never count my team out of anything and I didn't let on to the girls about my thoughts, but it was a tough stretch for me to think we'd have result success against the Woodbury team.  The Renegades had been part of our Academy program for two years.  I knew the personnel they had on that team, the athleticism and the skill. 

Anyway, we handled the majority of the older teams fairly well.  With only three games left in the season we came up against the Renegades.  I remember the tension before the game, on the parent's sidelines and on the player's benches. 

After the first ten minutes, it was clear that they were better than us.  They possessed the ball well and missed a couple of good chances early.  Like all coaches interested in a result I made an adjustment.  And I was interested in a result here though I never let on to the girls about this.  The Renegades had dropped a point early in the season against White Bear, and I knew that we stood a good chance of finishing in the top two in the East District with a tie in this game.  I brought Ripper back into midfield to counter some of the Renegade's athleticism (going to one forward up top), dropped one of my center backs to a deep sweeper position, and prepared to defend and counter for the rest of the game.  The girls played hard, the other team did not adjust to our adjustment, and we got some lucky bounces.  The game ended 0-0. 

This game out to be a very key point in our season.  We came back two days later and beat the White Bear girls 2-0 in a very good performance for us, then closed out the season with games against a weaker TC fire team and a decent St Croix group (this was a rescheduled game from late May).  The girls finished top of the East District and clinched a U14 Premier slot for the 2007 season.

This was a great feeling for me as a coach as this was one of my goals for the team this year.  The girls had worked very hard throughout the year and the effort showed in their play.

2006 Minnesota State Cup

One of the main reasons that I looked to play this team up an age group this summer is so that they could compete in the MN State Cup.  I had no delusions that we would go into this event and win it as I didn't think we were the best team to represent MN at the U13 age group (as a U12 team).  My reasoning for participation here was to give the girls the experience as a U12 team so that next year they could come into the event as "old hands".  They would have already faced the pressures of the event, be exposed to the registration/check in processes, be familiar with the tournament set up and rules, etc.  The more comfortable I could get these girls feeling in 2007, the better.

All teams participated in a random draw for the bracketing assignments.  In the initial draw, all three Bangu teams (us, the U13 Blue, and the U13 White) all ended up in the same bracket!  However, one team was disqualified for some reason and there was a re-draw.  With the odd number of teams now left in the event, 6 teams had to play in play-in games to whittle the number down to three.  These three would then be assigned to the two remaining brackets leaving each bracket with four teams.

We opened up against the Blackhawks for that play in game, and I remember coming into the game nervous.  I had no idea how strong the Blackhawks would be this year and I would have been very disappointed if I couldn't give the girls the full experience of State Cup in prep for next year. 

Things worked out well though in the end as we played very well and the Blackhawks were not anywhere as strong as I thought they would be.  So off to group play and three more games guaranteed!

We opened up group play against a tough Eden Prairie team.  We had a few very good chances early on, but they were the better team on the day.  Final score was 0-1 and I was proud of how the girls fought. 

Next we faced a decent Eagan team, played well and won 3-1.

Our final group game was against Wayzata's U13 team.  I knew the team had one key player, Amber Paul, in their center of midfield, and she proved to be too athletic for us.  I think she might have scored all 4 of their goals that day, and they killed us 4-1. 

Not a stellar performance by any means, but we were outclassed and out-athleticism by two out of the four teams we played.  What was important though is that we got the experience for next year, the year when results in this event would be way more important to us.

2006 US Youth Soccer Minnesota State Cup - U13 Girls (PDF)

2006 MYSA Summer State Tournament

Since we won the East District, we went on to the State Tournament where we drew Centennial, Wayzata, and Bangu White in our bracket.  We would play a round-robin format with the group winner moving on to the State Finals versus the winner of Group B.

We opened up against Centennial and won 1-0.  Our second game was against Wayzata, the team that had beat us 4-1 in State Cup two months ago.  We had worked in training about finding ways to stop their main threat, Amber, and our game plan had osme success.  Thank in part to this game plan and some stellar goal keeping by Chelsea, we ended up with a very well deserved 1-0 win. 

The girls needed a win or a tie in our last game versus Bangu White, a team that had beat us a month ago in the All American Girls semifinals.  Again, our girls played very well and finished the game in a 1-1 tie.  Much to my surprise, we were off to the championship game against Eden Prairie.

The final was a good game.  I thought we actually came out and had the run of play, but in the end we just couldn't contain their big, athletic forward.  We did score a great goal, but fell short 2-1 to end the season as State Runner's Up.

2006 MYSA U13 Girls Summer State Tournament (PDF)