Warsaw-NorthWood 2-0 (2-0)

It is Senior Night at Warsaw but fortunately that does not disrupt the start of the game too much. The pitch looks and plays great. This is what a natural grass soccer pitch should look like. It will be the best natural surface we play on this season. Compare this to our field, especially the way it looked Monday, and this field begs for soccer to be played on while ours begs for corn to be planted. The introduction are interesting, we now have a Skyler Durkenson, Micah Pipe-and-ger and a Brad Durkenson. New signings, I guess. On loan maybe because you probably won't hear those names again the rest of the season. FIRST HALF- Warsaw shows right off the bat that their senior # 12 Ocock has speed. He runs in behind our defense and threatens early on. He is the leading scorer for Warsaw with 9 goals. Play goes back and forth initially. But in the 9th, Trent has to come off with a soccer cleat malfunction (the top half of the shoe is separated from the bottom half). It takes time to find cleats close to his size on the bench. During all this, we have to shuffle people around in the back and middle and while we are moving players around, Warsaw gets in the box and ends up scoring the first goal of the game in the 10th. Ocock adds to it in the 18th with the second goal of the night. NW threatens lightly at times and has its most dangerous moment in the 33rd when a Jerson free kick goes in the box diagonally. Sebastian attacks the ball and heads it at goal but it finds the crossbar. HALF TIME- It is obvious to the coaches that we are not out of this game and only need a goal to turn things around. Some adjustments are discussed; one of them being to look for flank passing to create opportunities from the sides not just thru the middle of the field. SECOND HALF- Play is no longer dominated by Warsaw, it is a back and forth type of possession game. Our play in the back is more consistent and we are looking to target from the back. A nice thru ball to Juan in the 52nd minute near the box is the kind of opportunity that can change the game. Juan gets a couple of good touches on the ball, is by the last defender and goes at the keeper. Juan takes a great paced shot at the frame. The ball goes to the keepers right but he makes an excellent save. The second half shows us that we can play with very good teams like Warsaw and were it not for the fact that they executed twice early on in the match, this game could have had a different outcome. We learn from it, we will be better because of it. One note here about the officiating. It was refreshing to see some good referees out there. The center arbiter was on top of all plays and was very consistent and in my eyes the best official we have seen all season. Any official who goes unnoticed for the most part, is a good one. There was flow to the game, he let the players play. NOTES- The JV lost 3-1. Andy Duran had the lone Panther goal. The JV was down 3-0 after 10 minutes so it looked like it could be a long night but we have to give credit to the boys for hanging in there and getting a goal back. The JV is now 4-3. The Varsity's record stands at 6-3. The loss against Warsaw ends a nice winning streak (4 games). Next up: the next to last ever home game at our field tomorrow against Goshen. 5 pm (JV) and 6:45 pm (V) starts. Today's practice will be very light (warmup/stretch/no contact possession) and short. We should be done around 4:15-4:30. There is a team dinner at Randy Kauffman's house tonight at 5:30. The address is 13633 N. Ashbury Court, Nappanee.