I think the door is wide open this year. It's going to be a race to the finish, because there are so many teams that can win the conference this year, as opposed to the past, where you could identify the favorite. |
It's more or less for recruiting. |
It's such a good way to start. It was a hard-fought game by both teams. I felt like it could have gone either way. They've got some exceptional players, but we gutted it out and got the result. |
Last year, we were 11 freshmen just trying to get by. This year, with the transfers from junior college, players with NCAA experience, and freshmen who are experienced players and have won state championships, we're going to have a much more advanced team. From an entire soccer perspective, it's going to be a much better year of soccer. |
Monica Sanchez was absolutely brilliant for us. She had three or four game-changing moments. Those three or four big-time saves she made really kept us in the game. |
Our goal is to finish in the top three. We set that as a realistic goal. But what comes with being picked to finish third is that level of expectation. These lists provide teams in the league with an incentive to beat you. |
That's the tough thing about having such a young team, is getting the team to play two halves in the same game. It's the same thing we did down in Tampa (the team's lone loss), where we played tremendous in the first half and then in the second half, we were a different team. |
Those injuries, I think, will affect us, but we have several injured players that I hope can be back in time for (today's game). |
We're just hoping that we continue on our journey trying to play attractive soccer and give our kids multiple opportunities to be successful, because there's lots of opportunities against these outside opponents. |