Grand Lake U19 season begins.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, last season's success has generated a lot of interest in our team, our program.  For the first time ever, we will field two teams in the U19 age group.  I have refrained from labeling the teams "A" and "B" although it is obvious one team is more talented than the other. I want very much to foster a sense of community within our club and especially amongst our two U19 teams.  So far, so good with one small hiccup that I believe has been put to rest.

The BPL Grand Lake United team began play by participating in the Ohio Galaxies College Showcase.  Our first match was the second time we were outside all winter. We played against a team who had already played in a couple of tournaments.  The results were predictable. We struggled and looked completely out of sync if not out of place on the pitch with them.  It just was not a good start.

In the second match we regrouped and played much better overall.  We still took the loss, but we competed well.  Had we been able to finish on a respectable amount of our chances the result might have been different.  In the end, we came away with something to build on. A foundation for success was laid, if you will.

The third match we won against a team that had defeated our previous two opponents.  Yes, we made significant improvements throughout the course of the weekend.  We played better in every aspect of the game and for the first time played as a team.  Not a perfect game by any means but another step forward.

The following weekend we played our first league game.  New league. New opponents. A fair amount of trepidation.  From the opening whistle we played well. The run of play was fairly equal in the first half although I did believe we were the better team overall.  The second half proved me right as we finally found the ability to finish some chances.  The resulting victory put us on a early season mini - win streak and evened the season record at 2-2-0.

Next up was the Early Bird Classic and frankly, I wasn't sure what we had gotten ourselves in for.  Our scheduled opponents were from Wisconsin , West Virginia and Ohio.  A couple of these squads had very impressive resumes.   When we took the field Saturday morning it was immediately obvious we were up against a very fine team.  Big, strong, athletic and highly skilled.  They took it to us early on and went up 0 - 1 on a laser strike from 40 yards out.  The ball never got more than 5 feet off the ground and found back netting on the left side of our goalkeeper.  A tremendous shot by a high school aged player.

That goal allowed actually seemed to settle us down and as we approached the 5 minutes remaining mark I hoped to get out of the half being down just one.  No more had that thought entered my mind then the same opponent struck again... and again from nearly 40 yards out. Again another laser shot that never got above head high. This time to the right of our goalkeeper and into the back netting.  Unbelievable.  I was speechless.  One such shot might have been luck. He proved the first shot by duplicating it with a second. I honestly thought the rout might be on.

Thankfully our players had different ideas. With less than a minute remaining in the half and going into the face of a 20 mph wind with falling rain / sleet we got on the board on a superbly executed bangoo goal from our forwards.  That goal put us back into the match and gave us momentum going into half time.

We enjoyed the better run of play in the second half although we did have to weather a couple of  serious sustained attacks from our opponents.  We got the equalizer about 12 minutes in and this seemed to grow our confidence and shake that of the opponents.  I am sure the deteriorating weather conditions played a factor as well. We scored the winning goal with 8 minutes to go, survived one more serious challenge from the opponents then closed out the game in their end of the pitch.

The end result will show a win for us. We certainly showed further improvement.  I seek not to diminish our accomplishment but given that match was our opponents first of the spring and their first time outside all spring, well... I wouldn't want to face that team in a month's time. They are going to be an elite side.  This was a signature win for our team.

Unfortunately the remainder of the tournament was cancelled a couple hours after we completed our match. I would have greatly enjoyed playing again to see if we could continue our steady improvement or if we might have suffered a let down after a big win.

This week the Grand Lake United Wolves begin league play on Thursday. We scrimmaged our U17 team last night. Like the BPL team, this team struggled early on but made steady progress throughout the scrimmage.  The two U19 teams will scrimmage each other this evening for about 40 minutes and that will provide a stiffer challenge and a better indication of where the Wolves stand. The BPL team returns to action with a league game on Friday night.

Good luck to both teams and our program as a whole!