Gorge Canadians & Gorge Royals Battle to a 1-1 tie.
It's always fun playing games against our own Gorge Teams as the team are fairly evenly matched and the girls from the Gorge teams now know each other. This creates easy-going, good-natured competitive matchs. We have been playing against Coach Mike Carr's team now for four years and the two sides have always been fairly even. The Royals have lost one of their top players from last year to a U12 Gold team this year, so there was hope that the Royals veterans filled that gap and picked up a couple of other players that would assist. It looks like that has happened. For today's match, our squad as not at full strength (we were missing some quality players in Erin, Lauren and Joslyn).
A fantastic day for soccer at Bullen Park today ... sunny, slightly cool and no wind.
We again stuck with our 2-3-2 (d-m-f) formation. The games was fairly evenly matched with most of the play in the first half of the game in the Royal's end. This was due to had work in the mid-field and good defensive play by Olivia M. and Heather T. Kaitlyn M. opened the scoring by executing a fast, aggressive run from our end of the field through the Royals side and ended the run with a hard low shot into the back of the net! Gooooooooooaaaaaaalllllllll!
A lot of excellent passing and play work by the mid-fields today ... Jaymie C., Jennifer C., Alanna B., Cara McF. and Katlyn H. One play left Indy G. standing in the front of the net alone with the ball ... but alas, the left footed shot from Indy would not get by the Royal's Keeper. Paige W. played goal for our side the first half and was not really challenged. Another shut-out half of soccer for Paige.
The second half Alanna B. went in the net. We definitely missed her playing as a mid-fielder, because the Royals started to penetrate our side and in the first 15 minutes of play the Royals were in our 1/4 of the field and Alanna B. had faced about a half-a-dozen quality shots - turning each one away. One brilliant save - tipping a hard shot on net over the net only to go off the cross-bar - left both sides fans in awe. The Royals pressed hard and were leaving our forwards (Taylor G., Cara McF and Indy G.) standing alone up at the half ... we'll get those clearing balls up to you soon girls. Ultimately, it was another very hard high shot that beat Alanna B. with a couple of minutes to play. We were not dis-hearted and we pressed very hard and had many good chances later in the game, but could not finish.
Great playing Alanna B. !!
