NorthWood-Northridge 1-2 (0-1)

With a crowd of over 200 and temperatures in the 80's under sunny skies, this could have been a beautiful night for soccer. And it was. For the most part. Especially when you take away mistakes on the field, arbitration mistakes that is. Despite the fact that Northridge took the game to NorthWood for the beginning part of the first half, it was Clay(ton) who actually put the ball in the net first while being fouled by at least one Northridge player. The defender, Clay and the Northridge GK all went down, the ball disappeared in the net and Clay got up first to celebrate when "hairpiece Jose" put up his flag to indicate a foul. The goal was disallowed and quite truthfully it is getting disgusting to have to put up with such incompetence. For weeks the team prepares for this big game with NLC implications and one motion of the flag takes away a goal that if it had not gone in, probably should have resulted in a PK. Speaking of pk's.......in the 37th minute, Tad and a Northridge midfielder duel over the ball in the NW box (in the far corner) and the other linesman decides he is gonna play referee as well and calls a foul -no scoring opportunity mind you- after the Northridge bench screams "foul". This reaction by the AR results in the center ref pointing to the 12, much to the surprise of just about everyone in attendance. So the highway robbery continues. First we get a valid goal taken away and now Northridge gets an early Christmas present thanks to another linesman who is acting like a center ref. In both instances the center ref is as close to the play as the AR but does not blow his whistle.

The PK (as you can see above) goes in despite the fact that Kyle goes the right way.

The halftime speech focuses mainly on our workrate and the passing accuracy. The second half does start with a better workrate from the Panthers. In the 51st, a nice and dangerous shot from Northridge takes a save from Kyle to prevent the 2-0. A couple of minutes later a goal kick from Kyle goes to Beebe, the ball gets taken away by a Northridge forward who takes it in the box for the 2-0 lead. It deflates the Panthers for quite a while until the 66th when an Eschelman to Barahona (Brandon) to Wegmiller pass lands in the box and after one bounce, Taylor executes a first touch shot perfectly for a great goal, 2-1! Despite another chance from Taylor, which barely misses the frame and continued pressure in the last 15 minutes from NorthWood, the score would remain 2-1 in Northridge's favor. An unfortunate start which deserved more and I understand that players make mistakes, Coaches make mistakes and sometimes referees make mistakes but this night the officiating crew plain old screwed up and determined the outcome of the game. To illustrate their work quality, in the second half, the linesman ("hairpiece Jose" again) calls off sides after a short corner from Northridge, only to realize that it isn't off side. The ref and AR decide to give NR a free kick instead (yes, exaclty: WHAT????). After discussing this embarrassing decision on the field, Coach Dijkstra receives a yellow for basically recapping the ref's performances on the field.

We will get past this loss. The Panthers played a nice second half, and now have proven they can play with good teams. Next up is Mishawaka tomorrow (Saturday) so we can get back on the winning track. It was nice to see a big crowd show up to support the team. The JV lost 6-1 to Northridge's JV team. Their record is now 0-2 and hopefully they will get their first win against Mishawaka. The Varsity is 0-1-0 in NLC and 2-2-0 overall. Practice today is at the game field and will be fairly short, probably about an hour and will be considered a light practice.