Lake Washington

Bellevue 4-2 Lake Washington  

​ LW came into BHS stadium with some very positive momentum. Unbeaten in five games and still glowing from their 3-0 dismantling of Redmond earlier in the week. They are the early Kingo 3A leaders, well-coached, and feature young talent across their entire line-up. It was an opportunity for our girls to live-up to their ambitions for the season against a good opponent.     Statistically, the game eerily resembled our frustrating ties versus Redmond and MI:  19 / 4 scoring chances in favor of BHS. More dominance throughout the stat-sheet. However, there were stark differences beyond the more satisfying scoreline. First, our forward pressing had more urgency and we made it difficult for LW to build any sustained possession in attack. It takes a tremendous amount of team commitment and energy to press successfully, if just one player fails to step into their gap, a press can backfire and lead to easy counter-attacks. Successful forward pressing requires a striker to do as much work defensively as they do going forward and JoJo had her best game defensively applying relentless pressure on LW's backline (more of JoJo's contribution later). And behind JoJo, we won almost every 50-50 ball, with Sophie, Kiley, Grace, Ana, Katie, Court, Claire and Joelle staying strong in the tackle.    Another big difference from our prior two games: we played a much simpler game linking our defense, central midfielders and wingers.  In prior games we were just a bit too eager to get forward and rushed our passing, but versus LW we played simple and patient soccer. Patience doesn't mean slow. In fact, patient soccer often looks faster (like it did last night), as players find it easier to play quickly when making simple easy passes. Consequently, for most of the game last night, we zipped the ball across the turf to our teammates' feet, and were able to move the LW defense laterally and open gaps for our wingers and striker to operate.    Lastly, we got a great individual performance from JoJo. Our striker opened the scoring in the 12th minute from a precise pass from Katie Foster through the left channel. JoJo found a small window at the near post and squeezed the ball past the LW keeper for a 1-0 lead. Four minutes later and JoJo made it 2-0. Catie lobbed a hopeful ball forward and JoJo was just too quick for the LW defense and extended our lead to 2-0. In the 34th minute, JoJo turned provider, combining nicely with Joelle in midfield who calmly slotted the ball from distance low and with pace to the corner and we were 3-0 up and playing some of the best soccer of our season. And it could've been more. JoJo played a clever ball through the LW defense to spring Sophie but her composed shot past the onrushing keeper just found the post. We went into half with a very very convincing 3-0 lead with LW having only one real chance on goal (but a very good chance, with Madi making an excellent save to deny the Kangs).     And then we had 5 minutes I'd very much like to forget. The LW no10 is a very quick, very talented dribbler of the ball. For most of the night, we had done an excellent job of shutting her down by playing smart, tough and disciplined defense (Ana & Katie were excellent). But just 3 minutes into the half, she picked up the ball at midfield with very little forward support and just dribbled straight at our backline. Unchallenged for 10-15yds as we backed away, she smartly decided to take a chance from 20yds and hit the net over Madi and changed the game. 3-1. Two minutes later and our unassailable lead was suddenly assailable.  A LW free kick in a dangerous position and no10 again hit a decent ball over Madi's head and into the goal to cut the LW deficit to 2-3. The only good news: we can fix both errors that led to the LW goals. In the future, one of our defenders will step up and challenge the midfielder before allowing an uncontested shot...and we'll work on our positioning for defending free kicks.  And get better at both.   Fortunately, having lost our big lead and with all of the momentum with LW, we settled down and denied any more LW chances (until very late). We got back on-top of the game and in the 67th minute JoJo sealed the victory with a tremendous individual goal. Yes, Maud gets an assist, but JoJo had lots of work to do beating 3 LW defenders and the keeper to put the game to bed.   A very good 4-2 win against a good team and Kingco league leaders. For now.      Other highlights:  We got good minutes from several players versus LW: Caylee was very good at centre back in the first half, Joelle and Courtney ably shared the attacking midfield duties, Grace, Kiley and Sophie worked hard on the wings all night with good minutes from Claire in reserve and Priya deputized for Nikole at left back for a few minutes at the end of the first half; we will talk about being tactically intelligent at the end of games: taking more time on throw-ins, goal-kicks....getting to the corner with less than 5 minutes remaining, etc..; we are getting better at "resting back" when turning the ball over out-of-bounds, immediately falling back into good defensive shape before a defensive throw-in or goal-kick. This is especially difficult for our wingers who expend a lot of energy supporting our attack, but then need to work as hard getting back. This is why wingers often are substituted more often than other positions on the field, quite simply, they are expected to cover a lot of territory to make our formation work properly. We did a good job on Friday night but can always get better; finally, our backline of Maud, Catie, Paige, Nikole, Caylee and Priya were very good at completely eliminating any chances for LW's 5goal/3 assist freshman striker while ably launching our own attacks with composed passes into our midfield.