SAN RAMON -- The Huskies, coming off a 4-0 win a week ago, met up with the Spirit, who opened their season last week with a 3-0 win. The game started at 8:30am at Coyote Crossing, ensuring the expected 100 degree weather would not be an issue. The first fifteen minutes of the game started a little slow with the ball mostly on the Spirit side of the field, but with nothing for the Huskies to show for it. Once Emily Glaser entered the game as the left forward, the Huskies offense started clicking, though. Gabby Silva, the left midfielder, and Amanda Fornataro, the center mid, both did a nice job of getting the ball to Emily, who fired the ball many times either to the goal or in front of the goal. The first goal was actually scored off of a free kick by Emily, who centered the ball and Jeanette Sarkany, the right forward, put the ball in the back of the net. The Spirit goalie made many nice saves, so the Huskies went into halftime up only 1-0.

Similar to last week, though, the Huskies came out and absolutely dominated the second half. Due to Erin Cantoni’s wrist injury and Drew Dudley’s ankle injury, Natali Feyzbakhsh took her turn in as the second half goalie. Just to put the dominance into perspective, Natali touched the ball once and took one goal kick for the entire second half.

Only a couple of minutes into the second half, Navi Bal made a nice pass at midfield to Elizabeth Castaneda who sliced through the Spirit defense and brought the ball all the way down to and past the goalie, while Erin Cantoni, playing the right forward position, ran down hard and finished off the ball for her first score of the game. Elizabeth had to leave the game soon after this play due to her ongoing knee injury, but it was definitely a highlight of the game, especially considering this is Elizabeth’s first season of organized soccer.

Only a couple of minutes later, Navi Bal, playing center mid, made a beautiful pass in front of the goal where Erin Cantoni knocked in her second goal of the game. Erin wasn’t done yet, though. Emily got the ball out wide left and centered it and Erin was there again to score her third and final goal of the game. The video of the play only caught the pass, but did not catch the actual scoring shot. The bright side of that was the camera did catch the Spirit defender throwing grass on Emily after she picked herself up off the ground. Make sure to check out that video on the website, because that is some funny stuff.

Another quick random video you should check out is Colleen’s New Toy. This last week Coach Mike Lego went over drive kicks with the girls and most of them really caught on and some were able to use their laces for the first time. One of those that really impressed with her improvement was Colleen Tolan and she got a chance to show off her newfound power kick in the game and luckily it was caught on video. Nice job Colleen!

The rest of the game was spent on the Spirit side of the field while the Spirit goalie managed to keep any of the half dozen shots that were taken on her out of the goal.

This was a very strong game for the Huskies and I can’t tell you how impressed I am with how much these girls have improved in such a short time. Let’s keep it up Huskies!

End of Game Awards
victory patch: the Huskies
assist patch: Emily Glaser(2), Elizabeth Castanedoa, Navi Bal
goal patch: Jeanette Sarkany, Erin Cantoni(3)
defender of the game patch: Madeleine Clements
lightning hustle patch: Amanda Fornataro
star of the game patch: Erin Cantoni

Game Stats:

Goals:
Erin Cantoni 3
Jeanette Sarkany 1

Assists:
Emily Glaser 2
Elizabeth Castaneda 1
Navi Bal 1


Season Stats:

Goals:
Erin Cantoni 3
Emily Glaser 2
Jeanette Sarkany 2
Drew Dudley 1
Natali Feyzbakhsh 1
Amanda Fornataro 1
Korah Rose 1

Huskies 11
Opponents 5

Assists:
Emily Glaser 4
Navi Bal 1
Erin Cantoni 1
Elizabeth Castaneda 1
Drew Dudley 1
Natali Feyzbakhsh 1
Jeanette Sarkany 1
Gabby Silva 1

SAN RAMON - The San Ramon Huskies faced off against the San Ramon Tremors this morning at 10:00am at Quail Run Park. Although half the team was up late the night before with Coach Jim and Coach Scott watching the San Jose Earthquakes down in Santa Clara, the Huskies came out and dominated the first half. Although the Huskies controlled the ball most of the half, they weren’t able to get any good shots off. Going into halftime, the score was 0-0, but the Huskies definitely looked like the better team.

Emily Glaser got an unusual 15 minute break in the first half, so when the second half started, she was well rested and ready to go back in at her favorite position, left forward. Emily wasted no time in breaking the tie score by taking a nice pass from the defensive side of the field from Natali Feyzbakhsh and taking it down to the corner of the 18 and made a beautiful shot that went over the goalie’s head. Unfortunately, the videographer missed the shot, so it is not included in the video highlights.

Drew Dudley was a surprise starter in this game. She hurt her ankle at a practice a little over a week ago and she was not supposed to play in this game. Midway through the San Jose Earthquakes game, Drew looks over at me and says “Coach, I’m playing in tomorrow’s game.” I didn’t really believe it, but come Saturday morning, Drew said she was ready to go, so I started her in at goalie. She did a fantastic job back there, but she said she was ready to go in as right forward, so that’s where she started in the second half. After Emily scored her goal, Emily brought the ball deep into the left corner again and then crossed the ball right in front of the goal and Drew was in perfect position and got credit for scoring the second goal of the game, although Drew did admit at the end of the game that she didn’t actually touch the ball and that it was one of the Tremors players that kicked it in the goal. Regardless, Emily got the assist and Drew was given credit for the goal.

The third goal of the game came after Kristen Glavee brought the ball deep into the Tremors side of the field and after the Tremors kicked the ball off the sideline, Colleen Tolan made a nice throw-in to Drew, who made a nice pass to the center of the goal. Both Gabby Silva and Korah Rose were in good position in front of the goal and it paid off because Gabby kicked the ball up to Korah who finished it off with her first goal of the season.

With less than 10 minutes to go in the game, Amanda Fornataro, who had been out for awhile in the second half after running hard as the center fullback for most of the game, was put back in as center mid. Amanda wasn’t sure she wanted to go back in as a midfielder because it requires so much running, but she didn’t take long to find the back of the net for her first goal of the year as well. Amanda was in the proper position and she finished the shot, but it all happened because of the hard work by Erin Cantoni. She brought the ball deep, near the Tremors goal, but when surrounded by the defenders, instead of just kicking the ball towards the goal, Erin had the presence of mind to relax and passed the ball back to the middle of the goal where Amanda was waiting. Unfortunately, the video camera ran out of tape and was in the process of being changed when Erin passed it to Amanda for the final score of the game.

When watching the videos, make sure to watch the Tremor’s throw-in specialist. The one thing I will always tell the girls is to “not get thrown over”. Well, Natali Feyzbakhsh was the left defender and that is where the throw-in specialist was doing most of her throw-ins, right over Natali. It happened at least a half-dozen times, but the last segment of the video shows Natali finally getting the better of the thrower and used a header to keep the ball in front of her.

This was a great game for the Huskies and I was very proud of all the girls. They did a great job of playing as a team and they made it seem like there were more Huskies out there than Tremors, because it seemed like there were Huskies all over the field.

Because of the big win, the girls get to play kickball for part of Thursday’s practice because I did make a promise that they could do that if they won by 3 or 4 goals.

Great game girls!

End of Game Awards
victory patch: the Huskies
assist patch: Natali Feyzbakhsh, Emily Glaser, Erin Cantoni, Gabby Silva, Drew Dudley
goal patch: Emily Glaser, Korah Rose, Drew Dudley, Amanda Fornataro
defender of the game patch: Navi Bal
lightning hustle patch: Korah Rose
star of the game patch: Drew Dudley

Game Stats:

Goals:
Emily Glaser 1
Korah Rose 1
Drew Dudley 1
Amanda Fornataro 1

Assists:
Natali Feyzbakhsh 1
Emily Glaser 1
Erin Cantoni 1
Gabby Silva 1
Drew Dudley 1


Season Stats:

Goals:
Emily Glaser 2
Drew Dudley 1
Natali Feyzbakhsh 1
Amanda Fornataro 1
Korah Rose 1
Jeanette Sarkany 1

Huskies 7
Opponents 5

Assists:
Emily Glaser 2
Erin Cantoni 1
Drew Dudley 1
Natali Feyzbakhsh 1
Jeanette Sarkany 1
Gabby Silva 1

SAN RAMON -- The San Ramon Huskies opened the regular season this Saturday morning at 10:00am at Quail Run Park against the San Ramon Storm. The Storm is one of four U14 Rec+ teams that practice on Tuesday and Thursday at Athan Downs during the late time slot along with the Huskies, so these two teams have been seeing each other twice a week for the last month and a half. The two teams did scrimmage before the Rec+ kick off tournament and the Storm beat up on the Huskies during that match.

This game was played completely differently than that scrimmage. The Huskies kept the pressure on the Storm much of the day and just missed jumping to a quick 1-0 lead when Emily Glaser got the ball deep in the left hand corner and then crossed it and followed her pass so she was in position to score when the ball came back in the middle. Everything was done correctly except the finish. In her excitement to score Emily swung too hard and unbelievably the ball went straight up a good 15 feet, giving the goalie enough time to come over and stop the shot.

Emily would get another chance to take the lead when Jeanette Sarkany was rotated into the right forward position and quickly pushed the ball up into the right corner and made a beautiful cross. Emily was once again in perfect position and just made a nice little one touch poke into the back of the net. This happened just a couple of minutes before the end of the first half, so the Huskies went into halftime with a 1-0 lead.

The Huskies weren’t able to hold the lead for too long, though. The Storm slipped a pass through the defense and the only thing between the goalie and the Storm forward was the sweeper, Caitlin Weber. Caitlin tried to clear the ball, but ended up colliding with the forward in the goal box. Since the forward fell down, the referee decided that it was tripping and because it was inside the goal box, it resulted in a penalty kick. The Huskies lined up on the 18 ready to come in once the Storm player kicked the ball, but unfortunately, a few of the Huskies left on the whistle instead of after the ball was kicked. The kick went over the goal, but because the Huskies jumped off the 18 early, the Storm was awarded another kick, which they converted to tie the score at 1-1.

Since Jeanette came right out and made a difference, she was awarded the right forward spot again for the second half and she proved to Coach Jim that that was the right decision. Jeanette attacked a goal kick and fought through a couple of defenders and then dropped in a beautiful lofted shot right over the top of the goalie into the goal.

Unfortunately, the Storm came right back and got in behind the defense and followed up a shot that Navi Bal stopped but couldn’t get a handle on and ended up tying up the game again at 2-2.

The Huskies were able to hold off the Storm in the last few minutes and came away with the tie. There were chances that the Huskies couldn’t capitalize on, but the Storm had their chances as well, so all in all, it was okay to walk away with a hard fought tie.

Nice game girls. I look forward to watching you improve each week.

End of Game Awards
blood patch: Gabby Silva
assist patch: Jeanette Sarkany
goal patch: Emily Glaser, Jeanette Sarkany
defender of the game patch: Korah Rose
lightning hustle patch: Erin Cantoni
star of the game patch: Jeanette Sarkany

Game Stats:

Goals:
Emily Glaser 1
Jeanette Sarkany 1

Assists:
Jeanette Sarkany 1


Season Stats:

Goals:
Natali Feyzbakhsh 1
Emily Glaser 1
Jeanette Sarkany 1

Huskies 3
Opponents 5

Assists:
Emily Glaser 1
Jeanette Sarkany 1