Park girls soccer fought hard in the first half, keeping it to a 1-0 game. After losing energy in the second half, Benilde scored two goals at the end finishing the game 3-0. Park faced a rivalry loss but they’re looking to stay positive as their season moves forward.
Junior Amelia Beach said they’ve been working in practice to play as a team, but they still need to improve their playmaking.
“We need to continue communicating well and play with better teamwork,” Beach said. “In practice we’ve been working a lot on connecting passes and making runs to help play balls.”
Head coach Anne Beaton said inconsistency in their game caused them to give up goals, which ultimately led to their defeat. Individually, Park worked hard, but the team needs to play as a team to win games.
“We had a good effort in the first half other than the mental breakdown we had, leading to a goal,” Beaton said. “We had some good individual efforts, but not that collective effort we needed to win the game, so we fell short in the end.”
Senior Sophia Dvorak said she wished the team had kept their energy up after the first half and kept the game tight to win or tie the game.
“In the first half, we need to keep pushing through,” Dvorak said. “We kept it to 1-0 until half, and it was definitely a beatable game or tieable game, so it’s unfortunate we couldn’t keep it close.”
Beach said to win games, they need to play smoothly from the back to the front. She said they’ve begun to do a better job recently.
“We’ve improved a lot through building it up from our defense and bringing it up to the forwards, starting all of this from the back defenders,” Beach said. “To win more games, though, we need to keep playing consistently throughout the whole game.”
According to Dvorak, the team needs to work on its midfield defense and be more aggressive overall.
“We definitely are lacking in the main field with marking up when we’re getting crosses from the outside,” Dvorak said. “We’re playing very tentatively lately and need to start talking more.”
Beaton said they’re preparing themselves for sections and are training to improve every game.
“The season resets itself at sections, so it’s anybody’s game,” Beaton said. “If we can just keep using every game to get better and learn something new, we have the same chance as everyone.”
Dvorak said to win against Waconia, they need to work on being more aggressive with their shooting and pressure.
“We also could work on our pressure and shooting more, especially from the top,” Dvorak said.
“I just want to win more games and Waconia, our next opponent, hasn’t won yet.”
Park girls soccer’s next game is against Waconia at 7:00 p.m. Sept. 18 at home.
