Nice weather, not too cold, pollution at 130-140 AQI and even a warm sun blessing our scrimmage. Alva is sick and Franziska still did not recovered from her self-inflicted knee torsion. On top of that, Tehillah had a make up quiz in Biology.Giovanni came once more to help us out being one of the goalies. It was also great to see Bella back with her full happy energy.
The teams were: Yellow team – Bella, Mikayla and Phoebe defending. Inês center midfield with Kyra on the left and Alice on the right and Hailey as the striker. Red team – Giovanni, Emma and Greta defending. Me as center midfield with Sinead on the left and Suh-Young on the right. I have to say that it was a very well balanced scrimmage with changes for both sides. We played two halves of 40 minutes each and the first half ended 3 x 3, if I am not mistaken.
The second half, age started taking it’s toll. Kyra already left first half with pain on her leg. I was destroyed, barely could breath. Tehillah, in the middle of the second half was gasping for air and asked to be defender instead of striker and by the end even Phoebe asked to defend because her knee was hurting.
I was positively impressed with the girls. Normally we play 70 minutes with constant subbing. This case we played 80 minutes with no subs at all. I need to give two major kudos during this scrimmage. First it’s to Suh-Young. Last year I was always pointing out that Suh-Young sprints and then asks to be subbed but today she played the 80 minutes and still had oxygen to sprint until the end of the match. Very impressive! The other highlight was Wonder Alice. She took a shot from the edge of the box that was a real missile, impossible to Giovanni to defend. He even sent me an email complaining that Alice should be on his team, not against him. I hope Wonder Alice shoots one like that this Friday.
After the scrimmage, we still took some shots, using the inside part of the foot and lastly we had penalty kicks. The best one for me until now is Mikayla but I have a feeling we are well served on this criteria since Kyra, Inês, Hailey, Tehillah, Sinead and etc converted two penalties quickly and were able to leave practice early. Tomorrow, more practice! 🙂