Eighty-one minutes and forty-six seconds. That’s how long the Creighton women’s soccer team kept Missouri-Kansas City off the scoreboard last Sunday. The Jays were barely over eight minutes away from starting the season 2-0, then having four straight home games to look forward to as a reward. Instead they fell 2-1 after a late rally by the Kangaroos, dropping the Bluejays to 1-1-0 on the season and resulting in a long, quiet bus ride home.
“I think we were lacking in energy in both halves,” junior forward Lauren Sullivan said. “In the first half I think we were better organized, but we still didn’t have much fight and I think it was very apparent. We talked about it going into the locker room. We came out in the second half and we were feeling pretty good. It felt like the first few minutes at least we had better energy and it looked like we were more tenacious. I think it just boils down to fitness — we weren’t as fit as we needed to be, so that last ten minutes of the game really got us.”
Game fitness was a concern coming into the season after not playing any exhibition games prior to starting the regular season. It was still a concern even after a 1-0 win to open the season against South Dakota, and on Sunday the Bluejays saw how big of a problem it was when they couldn’t match the intensity of UMKC, especially late in the second half.
See 2015 Creighton Bluejays Women’s Soccer Pictures at photos.whiteandbluereview.com
There is no quick fix or mystical workout that can snap a team into shape. It requires a particular approach to training for every player, whether they are playing 90 minutes per match or zero.
“A huge part of becoming game fit is how you train,” Paule said. “I demand it — I demand that they train the way they’re going to play, and the moment that they back off they’re going to know it, because they’re going to hear it. In order to have a very successful team you have to have a team that is full of very good trainers that are training to get better.”
While they are building up their fitness to the level they want, the players say the mental side of the game shouldn’t be ignored either.
“I think fitness was a lot of it, but I think a lot of it was just mental,” senior co-captain Alissa Kohmetscher said. “We thought we were more tired than we were, so I think a lot of it was mental. … In the next games as we get more and more game fit it should help with that.”
When he took the job as head coach one of Paule’s main objectives was to build a team that won’t be outworked by anyone. That goal remains intact despite an early loss, and he likes the progress he continues to see, especially after taking an unexpected hit last Sunday.
“They’re getting closer,” he said. “They’re not where they need to be yet, but we’re getting there week by week, and we did do some good fitness this week to build on it, and we’re going to continue to do that, because we need to be the fittest team. We need to be the team that is not only physically fit, but mentally fit. What we saw was when they got tired their brains turned off and made those mistakes that they usually don’t make.”
Scouting Northern Illinois
The Huskies enter Friday’s match against the Bluejays with a 1-1-0 record after splitting a pair of home games last weekend. Senior forward Nicole Gabbo is ninth in school history with 13 goals scored and has already found the back of the net twice this season. She is the main focus of Creighton’s scouting report for Friday, but more concerning is probably the unknown factors that come with facing an unfamiliar opponent early in the season.
“I know they have a good center forward and a good center mid that like to run at people, so we’re expecting that,” Sullivan said. “Supposedly they have a girl who’s got a pretty good long throw, but we don’t know if she’ll be taking throws or not. And we know that in the past they’ve played a 4-3-3, but again from year to year you never really know what they’re going to do.”
With that in mind, the Bluejays will focus on what they know about the Huskies then just stick to the basics of what they’ve been working on since they first reported to campus at the beginning of August.
“I know they have some very dangerous players up top, quick players up top, and they’re very dangerous on set pieces,” Paule said. “Other than that I think they do try to play a little bit out of the back. We’re going to be ready for them. The main thing for us is keeping our team shape and building off that good defensive shape.”
The Bluejays and Huskies are scheduled to kick-off at Morrison Stadium at 5:00 p.m. After the conclusion of that match the 6th-ranked Creighton men’s soccer team opens their 2015 season against the Michigan Wolverines.
