Lady Aces Soccer Report From Coach Ed Berberich: The Lady Aces hosted Metro East Lutheran at a neutral site Saturday, losing a close match 2-1. Metro East scored the first goal in the 12th minute when a deflection on a Lady Aces clearance out of the box traveled backward and floated in just past goalkeeper Allison Thread’s fingertips. The game stayed at 0 - 1 until Maya Smith scored the equalizing goal in the 73rd minute, assisted by Haley Wright with a key pass from Ally Kendall starting the play. However, Metro would end up taking the win, scoring the final goal with just 3 minutes remaining to seal it. For the match, the Lady Aces took 12 shots with 9 on frame, created an additional 9 scoring chances, & took 3 corner kicks. Thread had 8 saves in goal. Metro East took 9 shots, with 7 on frame.
The girls played well enough to win this one, and shouldn’t feel bad about the end result. With the neutral field we located for this game, the playing surface wasn’t ideal for the way we want to play, but we did our best with what we had. In terms of games played, we’re still very early in our season, & that does make a difference in these matches against teams that have played so much more than we have to this point. In this case, this was Metro East’s 13th match, but the girls are playing hard through that and making improvements each time out. Something we need to work on is it took us a bit to match the intensity of the other team. It really wasn’t until the 2nd half that we started playing as aggressively as we want to as a team. We’ve still got a lot of other things to work on as well, but one thing we’re doing is we’re giving ourselves a lot of good scoring opportunities in these games so we’re pleased to see that this early. Our biggest challenge will be this upcoming stretch of the season. With only 3 games under our belts in this first month, we now face a 2 week stretch of 8 games, so our endurance will be tested.
The Lady Aces are 0 - 3 so far on the season. Their next match will be at home at the WVC field at 4:30 pm against Salem.