Close One

A great game tonight at Reserve Ave vs. Salem. It was a pretty close affair all the way with the teams being within a goal or two of each other for the entire 40 minutes. I was the roster guy tonight, but I was using my new spreadsheet system that takes all of the guess work out of the substitutions so I was able to watch a little bit more of the game than I have been able to in the past.

We played ground balls much better tonight than we did on Monday. I think they may have had a slight edge in total, but it was much closer and it showed on the offense. We got a lot of scoring off of good ground ball work. One goal in particular was impressive. Two of our better players hooked up on a 30 yard pass over the defense for an easy tally after a great ground ball grab near our restraining line. Many of the others were the usual solo drives to the cage, but I could see that the light bulb has gone on and they were actually looking for each other when moving the ball up the field - even setting the ball up behind the goal a couple of times. Even better than that, they were clearing out of the front of the goal and opening up some space for shooting and passing. It didn't always work and was uneven, but you could see the beginnings of a team offense.

We played tenacious defense as well. Many of the girls don't like to go in on defense but they did a very good job for the most part. There were a couple of breakdowns leading to Salem goals but it wasn't for lack of effort. One thing that really helped us was that the ref was properly calling the three second rule for the turnover if the defender was in good position. We got a number of these calls in some crucial spots.*

The goal tending was solid and we had a handful of saves. The one I remember most was towards the end of the game to preserve our one goal lead with maybe 30 seconds left. Right after that save, we got the ground ball and started to advance the ball up the field. However, one of their best players was in great defensive position and she got the three second turn over with maybe 10 seconds left right at our restraining line. The horn blew just as she was closing into shooting range and we won 8-7.

My favorite thing about this game was that we got some solid contributions from many of the first year players. The first year of lacrosse is tough and it's great to see players progress over the course of the year. Too bad there is only one more game to go...

* As an aside, there are two different "three second rules". The first is that no defensive player can be within the 8m arc for longer than 3 seconds unless she is within a stick's length from an offensive player. The other "three second rule", which is specifically for youth players (who aren't allowed stick checking) states that if an offensive player holds her stick in a 'checkable position' as defined by full checking rules for longer than 3 seconds, she will lose possession of the ball. This is designed to reward defensive players for their play