RLC vs Williams Baptist College

We played our first match of the 2010 season at The Lake today at 2:00. Our opponent was Williams Baptist College. Williams Baptist is a four year college in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas. I have a special connection with WBC, it's my alma mater. I graduated in 1979 when it was called Southern Baptist College, at that time it was a Junior College. The Lord used those two years at SBC to lay some foundations of faith in my life, and I made some life long friends as well. Enough reminiscing, let me tell you about the match.

The weather was perfect. It was sunny with mid to upper 80's temperature and a nice breeze to top it all off. It was our first match of the season, and it was long overdue. We started training on August 2nd with two a days until August 16th. We just completed a week of one a days and the boys were ready to take on someone besides their team mates.

When the whistle blew our boys were so pumped that they were a bit nervous and out of sorts for the first few minutes, then they begin to settle in. We were playing well with several opportunities in front of their net, but we couldn't put one in. In the 15th minute Griffin Groves went for a header in the box and the Keeper came out and up to challenge it and the Keeper got the worst of the collision. He fell on his back and his head hit the ground pretty hard. It was one of those things that happens in this game. Their was nothing wrong with Griffin's header and there was nothing wrong with the Keepers challenge, it was incidental contatct. The Keeper remained on the ground and the Official promptly stopped play. After our trainer examined him she called the ambulance just to be on the safe side. He was taken to Good Sam in Mt Vernon and was discharged later that night around 6:00ish. Praise the Lord that the Keeper didn't suffer any permanent damage. His neck is very sore and it will be for awhile. After the Official restarted the game we came out flat and just couldn't get it together. In the 25th minute one of our own, Wan Kuzac, went down due to a hard tackle from behind. He was carried off the pitch by his teammates. He sat out the rest of the game, and we're waiting to hear the official report on him in the next few days. He has to wait for the swelling to go down first. We need to pray that his injury is not a season ending one. After all of that first half drama, we somehow managed to find the back of the net at the 44:45 mark. Jordan Grace got the goal off of a very nice assist from Neil Houlihan. So we went into halftime with a 1-0 lead.

There's only one way to describe the second half,,, sloppy. We trained for three weeks on a 1-2 touch possession game, playing the ball wide, with 2 and 5 covering the flanks, 6 and 8 supporting 9 and 10, and 7 and 11 chasing back on the counter, but it looked as if we had only been practicing for a day or two. It wasn't lack of conditioning, our boys are fit, it was a lack of concentration and composure. The bright spot of the entire match was the stellar performance of our Keeper, Timmy Meldezis. He kept his net clean with some very nice saves.

We won, but it was ugly. We have some work to do in order to get ready for our tough Region 24 opponents. It's a good thing we got this game on film, we'll spend some time studying this film for the rest of the week.

Our next match is September 2nd against SWIC. We'll need to play better soccer to get a win at SWIC.