Lady Texan soccer prepares for district start

The Wimberley High School Lady Texans (70-1) had played four matches in seven days going 3-0-1 before taking a weekend off.

Last week saw the Lady Texans take to the pitch against a good Burnet High School team on Tuesday, Jan. 17, then travel to Georgetown for a match with Gateway College Preparatory School. Weary or not, both matches would be good pre-district evaluations for the team.

Coach Eric Nichols felt the Lady Texans came out ready to play.

“We have a few goals for each game,” he said. “The girls came out with high intensity and a strong start to the match which is what we’re looking for. Yet in the Burnet match, we seemed somewhat complacent once we’d scored.”

The Lady Texans led 3-0 at the half yet knew it wasn’t their best effort. When Burnet came out in the second with an increased vigor, Wimberley appeared to match the Bulldogs’ fervor or to keep focus. Burnet scored two goals in the second with the Lady Texans adding one of their own to finish the match 4-2.

Nichols evaluated the performance of his team.

“We discovered some issues in the various roles we’ve asked the girls to play,” he said. “We’ll get on that as well as communication during our practices. Burnet kept attacking in our third of the field and we had trouble clearing. Our team scored good goals but we weren’t playing our game.”

The Gateway College Prep match presented an issue the Lady Texans don’t face often — a grass field. The ball reacts differently on turf and natural grass slows the game as well as providing a different action to the ball. The girls fought through the differences and achieved one of their main goals of the evening by scoring within the first five minutes but still seemed to play down to the level of their competition and found difficulty in generating their own passion or energy.

“Our combination plays weren’t there and we were again frustrated in our communications,” shared Nichols. “There are some adjustments to be made, especially in changes of possession, and in a few small areas where we can tweak to find improvement.”

The match was never in question with the Lady Texans getting two goals from Emily Thames and four from Ella Sandoval to win handily 6-1.

“We’ll take a few days off leading Friday to refocus, refresh and get healed up,” said Nichols. “When we start district play, we want to get on early and make a statement. It’ll be a tight run with the teams we face so we have some ‘must win’ games especially when we have the home field advantage.”

The Lady Texans begin district play this Friday evening, Jan. 27, at 6 p.m. against Canyon Lake High School at Texan Stadium. They will follow up with a match in Fredericksburg versus the Fredericksburg High School Billies on Tuesday, Jan. 31 before coming back home to play the Davenport High School Wolves on Friday, Feb. 3, starting at 6 p.m.