This October has been beautiful and this Saturday was no exception. Before this game even started I was a little nervous because I thought we would only have 9 girls for this game since Samantha Denton was on a family trip. This morning, I then found out that Victoria Karlson had a prior commitment, so she wasn’t able to make the game. And then at the field, I found out that Isabella DeSanti was sick and wasn’t going to make the game. For those that are counting, that makes for a total of 7 girls available to play. In case you hadn’t noticed, the girls play 8 vs. 8, so this meant that we didn’t even have a full team. I wasn’t sure how this was going to work, but as it turned out, I had nothing to worry about. The final score of the game was 6-0, and it was even more lopsided than the score would indicate.

Apparently the old 70’s tv show was wrong, because in the Earthquake’s case, “Seven is Enough”. I don’t think the other team even noticed that we were playing only 7 players, and if you weren’t counting, you would never have known that we were outnumbered. Despite being down a player, the Earthquakes dominated this game from the opening kick off. Of the four goalies that played for the Earthquakes, only the last one, Brittany Jimena, ever even touched the ball. In fact, at one point in the second half, Kaitlin Lord was playing goalie and was sitting cross legged in the goal box. If Megan Hooks’ brother hadn’t pointed it out, I don’t know if anyone would have noticed since the ball was never in our side of the field.

Jillian Weber started the scoring early in the first half and that just opened the floodgates. Jillian scored another one and then Alicia Seronio added two goals of her own and then Brittany Jimena got a goal too. Going into halftime, the score was 5-0. Knowing that Jillian, Alicia, and Brittany could keep on scoring if given the chance, I put all three in a more defensive position and told Jillian and Alicia that I wanted them to concentrate on passing to their teammates that haven’t scored yet. Erika Shen, Kaitlin Lord and Sydney Place all had numerous shots on goal, but all three just couldn’t quite get the ball in the back of the net. Finally from a nice pass from Jillian, Sydney was able to get one by the goalie for her first goal ever! Sydney was really working hard for that goal all game long, and because of that, she was given the Star of the Game patch. Good job Sydney! Erika Shen scored her first goal this season on a pass from Brittany, but the ref either incorrectly called her for being offside or oddly called halftime during an attack, so her goal was officially called off, but for all intents and purposes that was a legal goal, so she still got a goal patch and Brittany was given an Assist patch.

Since we didn’t have any substitutes, I made a real point in having the girls stay on their respective sides of the field and it worked out really well. This extra space made it much easier to pass to each other and the girls did a great job of passing to their teammates. Some of the girls still chased the ball a little too much, so we can still work on that, but they’re definitely showing progress in that regard. I was very proud of all seven of our girls. They played very well, but were still very respectful of the other team (Kaitlin’s little siesta not withstanding :) ) Nice job Earthquakes, you have now played all the San Ramon U9 girls teams and have beaten all but the Elite, whom we tied last week 1-1. Our record is now 7-0-1 and we have outscored our opponents 39-7.


Patch awards
Victory Patch: all 7 of the Earthquakes
Goal Patches: Jillian Weber, Alicia Seronio, Brittany Jimena, Sydney Place, Erika Shen
Assist Patches: Sydney Place (for Jillian’s goal), Jillian Weber (for Sydney’s goal), Megan Hooks (for Alicia’s goal, Brittany Jimena (for Erika’s goal)
Blood Patches: none!
Defender of the Game: Jillian Weber & Megan Hooks
Hustle Patch: Erika Shen
Star of the Game: Sydney Place