On The Road

A good game down in Franklin County tonight. The game was at Waid Park which is quite beautiful but about 45 minutes away from our house. I don't usually depend on the Garmin but it was definitely a plus this evening. Due to the distance and dicey weather (it was raining off and on all afternoon), I thought we would have a small turn out, but we had about 20 girls out there. It turned out to be a fairly nice evening after all.

We won the game 20-15. It seemed like we played a solid hour and half out there. I guess the home team was stopping the clock on every whistle. Anyway, Franklin County was much improved from the last time we played them. Across the board, I think their players improved and a few of them have turned the corner into very solid stick handlers. But they really weren't a match for our athleticism up and down the lineup.

A couple things were driving me crazy out there. First, our girls have no concept of how to clear out the front of the goal when we are on offense. If you just hang around in there, the defense can as well so it limits the room you have to maneuver. Second, too many girls really don't know how to play defense. Don't run at people, get good position and run with them. You can't just hang around in the arc waiting for something to happen and we gave up at least 3 goals on 3 second violations. Third, ground balls are still staying down too long and we aren't good enough at getting them out of a pile. We definitely lost the ground ball battle tonight.

On the plus side, the girls are keeping their heads up when the run down the field with the ball and there were a couple of nice assists. Open field ground balls were handled well with most everyone running through them. The goalie play was solid and clears were to the sidelines. Plus, everyone hustled and put in a good effort. Finally, and most importantly, I think they had fun.