Women's Soccer Blog (Erica #1)

Wow! What a weekend!

We opened up our conference games with a bang!

Friday night we played against UCSD at UCSD. It was lined up to be a showdown between the two favorites to win conference. Going into the game we all knew, returners espeically how much of a battle the game was going to be. Every CCAA game is a battle, but some are harder than others. This was going to be a great test for our team.

We came well prepared and came out flying for the first half and even though we didn't score, neither did they and we were starting to wear them down.

Second half, Ann's goal broke the tie, Alex added goal number 2 and Gabbi aka Segall put number three past the keeper. UCSD snuck in a goal off a corner with about 10 to go in the game but it wasn't enough.

It felt so good to beat UCSD by that margin. Normally games against them are 1-0 battles that can go either way depending on who makes a mistake first.

After the men's game ended we all piled back on the bus to return to LA. We got in around midnight, went home to our beds only to return to campus at 6am to depart for Hayward.

Needless to say, no one got enough sleep, even those that napped on the 6 hour bus ride up there. We also somehow managed to get a shorter charter bus than usual which made for a very, shall we say, 'cozy' trip.

Sunday's match against East Bay was played on their brand new turf field which is great but it was also gigantic in comparison to our field. We were all feeling a bit tired/sore/fatigued from friday's game and the traveling, but we have a deep bench and great conditioning so we made it through sunday's game just fine with a 6 to 0 win over East Bay.

We had a very successful opening weekend and snagged all 6 points for our two wins.

One of the most exciting things about scoring 9 goals this weekend as a team is that they were scored in so many different ways by many different players. We are a very multidimentional team when it comes to offense and a very sturdy team when it comes to defense. At the start of this season, we had more newcomers than returners and so we knew we had our work cut out for us in terms of coming together as a team and figuring out how to keep our tradition of being a winning program going.

As of now we are 3-0 overall, with 14 games left to play in the regular season. We play against San Francisco State at home this friday. That will be another hard match. San Francisco always brings a good solid group players together and from what I've read, they like overtime so our goal will be to avoid overtime and finish the game in the regulation. And Sunday we square off against Monterey Bay at home.

Its going to be another tough weekend and I'm so excited for it!

Erica Thomas