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The Spikes played their third game on the Marin League schedule on Saturday April 18th at Redwood High School, against Amistad, a team that we've had some success against, including blasting them in the tournament final at the end of the 2007 season. It was a hot and sunny day, and we had a mere 12 players, meaning that most of the team ended up playing almost the entire game. Amistad was in the same situation, with a single sub, meaning that this was going to be a battle of wills and attrition, given that most players on both teams were still working themselves into their best game shape. The first half reflected that, as neither team could come up with a distinct advantage.
There were a few chances from each team, but nothing really definitive. Our defense bottled up their one really dangerous striker, and they were able to fend off the attacks we produced, several of which came from runs past the defense by Chris Jansen. At half time, we decided to focus more on our passing game, and this really started to produce some well built attacks that started to wear out Amistad. As we started to assert of authority over the game, Amistad started to make mistakes. They paid for one by their goalie, who tried to clear the ball, but had it intercepted by Leo. The ball deflected to Izzy, who noticed the goalie was well away from the goal, and lobbed it over his head and into the goal.
Amistad came back a few minutes later to put in a goal against the run of play, but the Spikes came right back to show them who was in control. We continued our posession passing game and used it to keep Amistad from creating much. Izzy slammed in a second goal a little while later to finish the scoring and secure our first win of the season, 2-1. That makes 4 goals in 3 games for our lovely latina. This was a solid win that showed us how effective we can be when we really work on posession. There were long stretches in the game when we looked really good, with people working hard off the ball to provide mutliple options for the person with the ball. Great job, and keep it up. Go Spikes!
Players: Bob, Chris J, Izzy, Karl, Kevin, Leo, Matt, Michael, Patrick M, Ryo, Scott, Thang
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