Little things make a difference

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter
 
The Dogies Soccer team had a rough go last week as they ran into two buzz saws, taking on the 3A East number-one seeded Torrington Trailblazers on Tuesday, and followed that with a trip to Scottsbluff on Thursday. In both contests, head coach Josh Peterson’s team was tasked with trying to keep up with fleet-footed strikers who got the better of the defense far too often, and Newcastle dropped both games by a score of 0-10.
Facing the speed of the Trailblazers’ attack, Peterson identified small mistakes by his defense, which gave their opponent easy opportunities to score.
“We’ve really struggled with teams who have speed this year,” Peterson began. “It’s little things like recovering and shifting on defense, and you have to be really sure of your tackling. If you miss a tackle and you don’t shift, especially against teams who are fast, they will take advantage of that every time.”
The Blazers did indeed take advantage of those opportunities, and went into the half up 6-0 over the Dogies. Circumstances also went against Newcastle as four of those six points came from two penalty kicks and two corner kicks, but regardless of the nature of the goals, a six point deficit at the half presented a nearly impossible hurdle to overcome.
“We did a somewhat better job of taking care of the little things in the second half, but it obviously wasn’t enough,” Peterson sighed. “We played okay in the midfield and we had some chances on the attack, but our defensive mistakes made us pay.”
The Dogies were able to get off six shots on goal during the contest, and goalkeeper Bradyn Frye made 11 saves, so there were some positives for the team to take from the game as they prepared to take on Scottsbluff on Thursday.
Unfortunately, the Bearcats’ squad bore a resemblance to the Blazers in that they too possessed a great deal of speed, and took advantage of the same little mistakes the Dogies made during the contest.
“They were pushing the off-sides, so when we missed a couple of those and they got a head start, then we were really in trouble,” Peterson nodded. “A lot of it was we weren’t shifting as quickly as we needed to, and we were not anticipating balls that were going through.”
The little things compounded for the Dogies, and Scottsbluff was able to take the 10-0 lead only 13 minutes into the second half. Nebraska has a mercy rule for varsity soccer which was implemented at that time, resulting in the game being called early. As such, the Dogies then lost any opportunity to get on the board.
Peterson has implemented a different strategy in the Dogies’ game plan this season by bringing the defensive line up the field a little, thereby putting more pressure on the attack. So far, this strategy has paid off with some early wins. However, these two teams were a little faster than what Newcastle has faced so far and Peterson stated that had a great deal to do with the issues his squad had during the contests.
“I think a lot of it is how we play together as a team. We are stepping up [the field], but when you step up and are being aggressive like that, you have to be really good at doing the other things you need to do, especially when you’re playing teams with speed,” he explained. “If you have one bad touch, or one miscommunication then you’re in trouble, whereas if you’re evenly matched and you have a bad touch, you still have time to recover. That’s the biggest difference in the last couple of games.”
The Dogies will be working on fixing the little things as well as timing of when they shoot while on the attack this week as they prepare to face the Bison in Buffalo this Friday. Once again, weather impacted the schedule as they were to play the Johnson County team on Tuesday and then again on Friday. However the Tuesday contest, which was postponed from its original date, was postponed once again to May 7th, due to snow.
“Buffalo has a pretty strong defense and they also have some speed. They have one really big, fast striker and we’ll have to bring our A-game to stop him,” Peterson anticipated. “They also have a really good kid in the midfield at holding the ball and distributing. As a team, they are probably not as fast as Torrington and Scottsbluff, but they have a few that are burners.”