Week II: Greensboro Tournament

The Spiders had another interesting weekend with an exciting win and a disappointing loss. On Friday, the ladies took on a tough and determined Old Dominion team. The Lady Monarchs came in with a 2-0 record and lots of confidence. After giving an early goal, the Spiders clawed back, first establishing some good possession and field position, and then with a great goal by Carrie Holland. Jessie Wolfe slipped through the right side of the ODU defense and got to the endline. From there she beat a player and slotted a great pass to the back post, where Carrie hammered the ball off the inside of the near post, across the goal, off the back post and in! Momentum switched to the Spiders, and just when it looked like we were headed to overtime, Susan Darrah took a feed from Annette Isham and spun a beautiful shot over the keeper from 16 yards for the game winner. It capped a great night for Susan, who played very well in the midfield.

Coming back from a deficit is a good thing to have done, and we felt pretty good about our accomplishment going into Sunday.

On Sunday, we spotted a very strong Oregon State team an early lead when a missed tackle resulted in an uncontested cross to an unmarked player at the back post (not a good combination of events!). Kelly made a valiant effort to save it, but it was too little, too late. Our misfortune continued when a savable shot from wide of the goal was misdirected by a recovering UR player for an own goal. At 0-2, the Spiders managed to fight well for much of the half and create several good chances. Unfortunately, the net was never found. A third goal by OSU early in the second half resulted from an attack minded UR team getting caught in transition. The remainder of the game was very capably managed by several reserves. They did a great job of “eating up minutes” and gained valuable experience. Robyn Brooks, Sarah Hilt and Kate Hudson all played very well down the stretch.

When we look back at this one, I think that we will see that OSU has proven to be a very good team. We did not play our best on Sunday, so we have to learn from those critical mistakes and get better defensively. Having said that, I think that we took a lot of positives from the match. Our young team continues to benefit from high level playing experience. We are all looking forward to reaping the benefits down the road.

The ride home was a quick one and we loved our driver, Big Willy. He is a new addition to the Team, and helped make the weekend enjoyable.

UNLV is coming off a big win at Arizona State and will be a great opponent this weekend at the VCU tournament. Kickoff is 4:30 at Sports Backers Stadium. Come watch our Richmond debut if you get a chance.

I’ll be reporting again next week, From the touchline.

Coach Albright