Our first games after selecting 12 new players a few days ago, we found Worcester bathed in sunshine and balmy 70+F/20+C! Today’s fans included Sophia’s parents from Stow, MA, who brought cider, donuts and apples, Lizzy’s parents from CT, Claire’s mom, and Abby’s parents from Boston. Our club president, Caroline Collins-Pisano, had arranged for us to play both WPI and Holy Cross today since they are both in Worcester.
We warmed up on a corner of the turf field above a parking garage at 1pm, and we remembered how physical and pressuring WPI has been in the past. So the advice was not to hold the ball very long, to have fun and “smile at least once”, per Mudia.
Most of the play was in WPI’s half, and Lizzy wasted no time in getting off the first shot. Mudia followed that 10 minutes before Julia was able to sail the ball over their keeper for our first goal.
WPI got a shot off in the 34th minute, but it was wide. Lizzy and Kelly had several corner kicks, Kelly had a shot go over the cross-bar and Kalyn had a shot go wide.
In the second half, Mudia and Kalyn had shots go wide and saved before Julia had two saved and one wide. There was a goal disallowed when their keeper couldn’t hold onto the ball but seemed to be injured somehow as we put it in their net. She was replaced and WPI retained possession of the ball.
Julia made the best of a scramble in front of their goal and scored a very opportunistic second goal - a brace, as they say. Mudia and Abby had shots prevented late in the game.
At Holy Cross, we were impressed by how well they pressed us and created the first chance, which Caris squashed handily. Kalyn’s shot in the 10th minute was saved for a corner taken by Ella, and Eliza had a shot saved.
After Zanna’s shot went wide in the 24th minute, Caris made another save before Eliza and Julia had shots saved. Immediately after that, in the 37th minute, Ella fired an extremely powerful and unstoppable shot that gave us the lead. Holy Cross had a shot go wide just before half-time.
Caris made a wonderful suggestion to change our formation to 4-5-1 or 4-3-3 with three center-midfielders and wingers that help in midfield as well, based on how flat our structure looked her. It worked really well, and the players responded very well to it!
After Claire got a shot off, Alison scored our second goal in the 58th minute. Caris made another heroic save by coming out strongly to squash another shot for a corner. In the 70th minute, Mudia set up Zanna for our third goal. Our passing had improved as the game progressed! Near the end of the game we had 4 corner kicks when, Caitlin and Ella had shots saved.
It was a joyous time for us to be playing again and to play so well without much preparation!
CD Kalā Harman+Molly Knox
OD Aislin Mitcham+Katie Reisman, Kate Clark+Sara Pickrell, Kelly Rutherford
CM Sophia Greszczuk+Claire Meli, Abby Burgess+Alison Sasaki, Ella Steinhilber
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