Coach Hammons told the boys before the match that "it's not what happens to you that matters so much, it is how you respond to what happens to you." Little did he know he wasn't talking about just yesterday's match, but so much about this one.
First of all we played a match with far more effort against a better team tonight than last night. West will win quite a few matches this year. Still without Jay and Lucas, we battled very well for most of the first half, just missing on a couple of nice set pieces. (We still have a lot to work on to generate some attack from the normal field of play.)
West's deadball just before half created a second chance inside the 6-box. West's shot screamed toward Brown who was on the goal line, hitting him in the chest. The center ref interrupted that ball-to-hand as an intentional handball that denied an obvious goal (the rule reads something like that).
So with 20 seconds left in the first half, West was awarded a PK, and just to make it fair, we lost Brown and got to play a man down the rest of the match. Derek Engle, who played just a marvelous game in the net, came within a hair of saving the PK.
The boys responded very well to the adverse conditions. Nick Hagenkord cashed a corner less than 3 minutes in to tie the thing back up. We, unfortunately, gave up a corner kick goal 6 minutes later (there only one of the half). So there we were back to the one-goal deficit with 30 minutes to go and a man short.
Each throw-in and corner we generated it seemed offered up a good goal-scoring opportunity. In fact, one of our corners, lead to our own PK. So we were a hair away from tying the thing back up again. We would have other chances as well, 2 or 3 with 2-3 minutes left in the match.
Let's see if we can get ourselves back to .500 tomorrow and build from there. Tonight was a positive in that step towards getting to where we want to be.
Junior keeper Derek Engle was the BWhite Player of the Match. He defended his box very well, challenging balls tonight, and as usual, he came up with a couple of athletic saves. And what Derek does so well, we keep possession of the ball when he releases it.
STATS:
First Half
STA: Shots: 4 (1) Corners: 1
LSW: Shots: 9 (6) Corners: 2
0:20 Fearon (PK)
Second Half:
STA: Shots: 7 (3) Corners: 7
38:09 Hagenkord (Velasco bends it right for the header)
LSW: Shots: 8 (4) Corners: 1
31:28 Fearon (Right-footed corner bent into the near post, flicked in with a quickly raised right foot.)
Corners Created: (Velasco 2, Holland 2, Hagenkord 2, D'Adamo, Kutey)
Shots: (Hagenkord 4, Kutey 4, Stoecklein, Driscoll, Ropson)
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