Playing their third Women’s Premier Soccer League (WPSL) Elite League match in just six days, the Chicago Red Stars were not able to overcome a 0-1 first half deficit against Western New York Flash, eventually falling 0-3 on the road last night.
While the score was relatively lopsided, the Red Stars players and coaches were not dwelling on their first loss of the season.
“We were challenged tonight,” remarked Red Stars’ midfielder Julianne Sitch. “We gave up a few goals but there are things we can always learn from and take away from every game.”
The first half was a relatively even contest, but WNY struck first on a Katy Frierson goal in the 29th minute. That score would hold up until the 70th and 74th minutes of the game when WNY found back-to-back goals by Adriana and Omolyn Davis and sealed up their home win.
“The fact that it was our third game in six days definitely showed,” said Red Stars’ Head Coach Rory Dames. “We had a very difficult time keeping possession of the ball with the pressure they put us under. That’s partially due to the work-rate of WNY and partially due to going through a tough stretch of our schedule and still trying to gain our match fitness.”
“One of the most important things we had to take from this game was an improvement in our overall game fitness,” Dames explained. “Once we finish off this first part of the schedule we can go back and train some more and pick up the pace of how we play. We’ll reorganize our attack and it will definitely be beneficial for us at the end of the year.”
“We didn’t play our best tonight,” said Red Stars captain Lori Chalupny. “They gave us some problems and exposed some weaknesses. This is a great opportunity to learn from mistakes and improve as a team. We look forward to the next time we play them (at home).”
Red Stars’ midfielder and co-captain Jen Buczkowski had similar sentiments as her teammates.
“It wasn’t a good performance tonight,” Buczkowski said, “but we learned a lot of areas we need to improve on. Overall, they outplayed us tonight and we need to regroup and move on to get three points on Saturday (against visiting New England Mutiny).”
“I hate losing, but we went after the game and tried to find an equalizing goal,” went on Sitch. “We will learn from this and take away the positives and negatives and make it better for the next game.”
“If we can come out of this stretch with nine points in four games, then the players have done a really good job and we’ll be prepared to finish off the second part of the league schedule,” said Dames.
The final game of that stretch is this Saturday at 6:00 p.m. CT when the Red Stars will host New England Mutiny at Lakeside Field on the campus of Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. Individual tickets on sale now at www.chicagoredstars.com: $15 Preferred and $10 General Admission. Discounted group tickets are available by emailing info@chicagoredstars.com.
