The Lady Vikes showed their league dominance again as they breezed by league opponent Lynbrook High 4-0 on Friday night. The Vikings controlled the game with their clear advantage in possession of the ball.
The first goal scored by the Vikings came from center back Olivia Musil (’15) 10 minutes into the game. She fired her shot from 40 yards out and put it just over the head of the opposing goalkeeper. But the rest of the half seemed to be slow as no more goals were scored and the ball stayed in the opponents’ half. Assistant coach Eric Seedman believed that the girls lost a lot of their motivation after the first goal was scored.
“We were ahead one to nothing, but we weren’t playing up to our level at all,” Seedman said. “It is important even if you are playing against a little bit weaker competition, to play to the level of excellence that you have already created for yourself and we were not there at all. [We] had a good talk with them at halftime and they really picked it up, so it was a completely different team the second half.”
The team showed that the halftime speech from the coaches was helpful in regaining focus as they came back to score three more goals. The first came from Jacey Pederson (’16), who dribbled through a few defenders and then found Megan Tall’s (’14) head resulting in a goal. The next one came when Sunny Lyu (’14) passed the ball to Katie Foug (’16) who finished and put the Lady Vikes up by three. The final goal came when captain Nina Kelty (’13) drove down the sideline and lobbed it up to Issy Kelsy (’14) who put the ball in the back of the net for the fourth and final goal of the match.
“In the second half, I thought we picked it up and showed it by scoring three goals,” Julia Kwasnick (’14) said.
It appeared that the Lady Vikes would settle down and let the clock run out for the last 10 minutes of the game as they brought the ball back to their own half to possess it and close out the game. Goalkeeper Erin Chang (’13) had very little to do as the offense held onto the ball and kept it on the other half. She ended the game with zero shots on goal and therefore, no saves. Although defense seemed irrelevant today, Foug believes it is necessary to improve in order to do well in the next games.
“We need to improve our individual defending and speed of play because the teams we will be facing are going to be a lot better and pressuring harder,” Foug said.
The team will look to improve its strong season with five games left before the playoffs start. The players and coaches both agree that they will need to step it up by the time playoffs come around.
“We need to play at a consistent level the way we did for about 20 minutes today,” Seedman said. “We haven’t done it consistently, except for one game, for the whole 80 minutes. As soon as you make a mistake, the good teams will just jump over you.”
The Vikings will look to earn another win when they play cross-town rival Gunn High School next Wednesday at 3:30 p.m.
