I should had seen the bad omen. Having 5 players sick or injured was not a good sign. For that, I would like to publicly thank Louise for her effort by playing while still recovering from her flu.

Well, I decided for the first time not to write about the match right after it. It’s very nice and easy to listen and write compliments but when we lose, it’s very hard to talk about. Particularly, I hate it. I always told my team that I lose with them. You can ask any teacher, I don’t like to talk about our defeat to others. Yes, I know it’s a learning experience but I prefer to study the day before, not by having a zero in a test. I don’t think losing will make our team better. Practice makes our team better. What may happen is that maybe after this horrible performance, we can be more motivated to outshine ourselves in the future.

Since I am responsible for the lights in the Urinetown Musical, I still did not have time to watch the tape of the match, kindly filmed by Victoria, who still recovering from her sprained ankle so I don’t recall all the details (my days in campus now are from 7:30 AM until 12:30AM this week). What I can say is: we did not talk to each other in the field, we did not take advantage of all the shots we had (we shot a lot), our goalies were not well positioned and we let Rego’s number 10 and 11 play freely. I only had two substitutes and they gave as much as possible for the team as the players there were in the field. We were off. I felt we did no play with heart, specially the first 15 minutes of the second half. We opened the score in the first half with a beautiful shot from Hailey, then not long after Louise also scored a nice goal from far. They scored after a moment of confusion between Janie and Inês/Katy (for me, lack of communication) and then Hailey score another beautiful go with a header, but this time it was a own goal.  The final score was 5 x 3 to REGO. We had many chances to score but REGO actually played very good, specially their number 10 and 11, with quick passes, dribbles and beautiful football.

On a more lighter note, I cannot write this post without talking about how …. unique Louise’s behavior was. Extremely hyper active, joyful and talkative, exactly the normal opposite during a match when she normally is extremely concentrated, serious and focused. Still, like that, she managed to score two goals and control most of the time the midfield. Other highlight of the match was actually after it, when Katy went to ask Rego’s #10, the best player of the match, if it’s true that she is joining SCIS next year. Ah, she asked this in front all REGO’s team. 🙂

From the coach’s perspective, I decided to test a new formation to play when we are losing with two strikers. Next practice I will try to see how we can organize that.

Goals: Hailey and Louise (2)
Assists: Olivia (2)
MVP of the match: Louise