Trying to change the dynamic

First year Pequannock girl's soccer coach Sean Palen has a tough job. He needs to turn around a program that has had little success. On Monday afternoon, they played their second game of the season and had to face Lakeland, one of the better teams in the area. He knew it wasn't going to be easy, playing the Lancers never is. It’s more like a track meet with their forwards racing to the ball setting up a numerical advantage in close and the score reflected exactly that. Lakeland won the game 5-0, but three goals came in an eight minute span of the first half and the other two within five minutes midway through the second. For the other 67 minutes, the Panthers played Lakeland evenly, matching them possession by possession. Their defense was solid. Melissa Murphy made many nice stops and in net and while they didn't get on the scoreboard, their effort never waned.

The first step in revitalizing a team is to change the attitude; you won't win if you don't think you can. If you enter a game defeated, the effort is lax and will become even less after falling behind quickly early in the game as they did yesterday. The thing is they didn't quit. Did Lakeland have better players? Yes, they did. They were also more confident going about their business. The best way to share what I saw on the field for Pequannock came late in the second half. With maybe five minutes to go, Lakeland was on a break away. It looked like a scoring opportunity for them but Courtney Graziano had something to say about it. She trailed the play, running down the middle while the ball was moving down the left side. Then as the move was made to come inside, she took the proper angle and broke up the play with a slide tackle. While it will not show up on a stat sheet and had no impact on the outcome, it was a play that for me, spoke volumes. It said that there was no quit and that is as big of a moral victory that you can have.