Season Report - Week 3

Monday, March 27 - Kentridge

JV won 3-0 
Varsity won 3-1
 

The evening was a good time to build momentum against a team that built possession and worked hard. We scored three quality goals from Zach Ellis and Luc Talens with two towering headers! Zach is creating some great goal highlights already and Luc fully deserved his goal; he has really stepped into the leadership role this year. Zach Ramsey’s turn of pace and close control is lovely to watch: he bossed the game for periods. Patrick continues to cause the opposition’s defence problems. Our midfield had a new look with Parker and Cade stepping in and doing well in their roles. We conceded a late consolation but overall it was a good momentum builder. We still are a work in progress but the coaches feel like we have learnt a lot about this squad from the challenging preseason.

It was also pleasing to see JV perform well on Monday too. Lots of good talent to draw on from this squad. I also watched the C team on Wednesday earn a hard draw against Issaquah and saw lots of good things from Coach Kimmel’s talented squad.

Thursday, March 30 - issaquah

JV lost 0-2 
Varsity lost 0-2
 

This was a bit of a kick in the guts!  I thought this was our best performance of the season. Before the game we talked about challenging and beating the best teams in our league (and state) and playing our way with no fear: trusting our ability and gameplan. I thought our Defensive mids were excellent throughout the game (Oscar, Ryder, Parker and Jackson). We talked about playing forward earlier and getting our front four to play closer together and combine and thought we created some good chances and probably deserved to be in front at half time.

Games like this are decided by fine margins and not quite converting chances cost us but we can draw some positives from the performance. We can compete against the best teams, we can create chances and establish a pattern of play against a good team and managed to keep our shape and discipline. At the same time there are changes we can make to ‘see out’ games even if we lose two of our central defenders. Second half the game drifted into long ball counters and we needed to do a better job of retaining possession and playing with the ball rather than constantly turning and trying to recover our shape. This led to fatigue and fouls being committed putting more pressure on us.    Tanner Swanson had a great game today and deserves credit for the way he played defensively but offered us a threat going forward.  Cody Chung had a solid game, making good decisions and winning the physical battle along with the rest of our backline.

This is a great group of boys. Some will be frustrated they didn’t play but all urged their team on and were together. There will be more limited game opportunities as we go into regular season for those not starting but we want every player to feel part of what we are trying to build. They are all great boys, fun to be around and passionate about what we are doing. Every experience, from heartbreaking defeats to fun team dinners bring us closer as a team, proud to coach them.  On to the next one: Skyline!!!!!

See you there!

Coach Tomlisson

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