Women's Soccer Blog: Katey Pennington Recaps Last Week
11/1/2011 12:00:00 AM | Women's Soccer
Each week a different Gonzaga University women's soccer player will recap the week prior. This week Katey Pennington, a freshman defender, shares the highlights from the past week.
Hey Zag fans!
We're coming up on our last game this weekend at Portland! It's crazy how fast this season has gone by!
On Monday our practice was short and sweet as we came off of a hard weekend and the coaches wanted our bodies to fully recover. We had a short body weight workout out on the practice field where we did some lunges, pushups and short agility workouts to get our blood flowing. After that we hopped into the pool for recovery. At 7 p.m. that night a few of us went to watch an alcohol speaker talk. She was very funny and taught us a lot and we also earned some PRIDE points out of it!
Tuesday we had a much-needed day off. We got to focus on our schoolwork and it allowed us the time we needed to get our bodies ready for the game on Thursday.
On Wednesday, we started off by watching some video to get ready for the game Thursday. We talked about San Diego's formation and style of play and looked for ways we could exploit them. After video, we headed out for a short training session in preparation for the game. We started with a passing drill where we worked on our first touch and playing the ball to the correct foot. After that we worked on set pieces and corner kicks, both offensively and defensively. To end the session we finished with an intense game of 2-v-2 with bumpers. We were all pumped up and ready to give it our all in the game Thursday!
Thursday- GAME DAY!!! We were set and ready to play San Diego at 3 p.m. It was our last home game for the season and the last home game ever for the seniors so everyone was ready to give everything they had. We battled in the first half but didn't play as well as we hoped and at the half were down 2-0. In soccer 2-0 is one of the worst leads to have so at half time we changed our formation and were ready to go back out and battle even harder. We switched into a 4-3-3 and pressed them hard and got a lot more opportunities in the second half. Unfortunately they scored another goal off a free kick and the game ended 3-0. Sometimes it just doesn't go your way.
The coaches gave us 48 hours off after the game to let our bodies rejuvenate so we would be ready for a new week and our last week of training before the game at Portland on Saturday. We had our first training session for the last week of training of the season. To start off we did an agility and passing drill using both feet, getting the ball down out of the air, and then ending with headers. We then moved into a 3-v-3 + 2 possession drill and the intensity and focus from the passing drill was carried on and added to. After that we played an intense game of arsenal where one team could only pass the ball back once and one team had eight seconds to shoot or they would force a turnover. After both teams experienced both restrictions, we played a straight up scrimmage and the blue team won this part of the training session 2-1. Then we moved into 1-v-1 transition where the intensity was picked up even more. The yellow team took the win in this game, so to break the tie we ended the training session with the longest penalty kick shootout in history! Everyone was making their shots and the celebrations were top notch but in the end the yellow team came up with the victory so they got to get their picture taken for the wall. The training session was one of the best we've had, getting two days off really helped give us the energy we needed and we are ready to continue to build off of that this week and get a win next weekend at Portland under the lights!!
Thanks for all of your support!!!!
