by Natalie Murray ‘18

The stadium clock buzzed as the game came to end, and the Warriors walked off the field dejectedly, heads hung in disappointment. After half-heartedly congratulating their opponent, the girls sat in the far corner of the field and discussed their loss.

This sequence of events was the norm for the girls’ varsity soccer team in the early season, but after their first victory against Springbrook on September 19, the Warriors went on a four-game win streak.

The Warriors’ rough start can be attributed to the fact that the team lost 16 seniors last year, and had to rebuild nearly their entire team. After watching last year’s team dominate nearly every game they played and advance to the state semifinals, the players and coaches realized lots of work had to be done to get the team back up to that level.

“I knew it was going to be hard to try and get back into the same rhythm that the team had last year,” said senior captain Annie Shigo. “It took a little while for things to fall back in place”
Sherwood began to improve after a very unsuccessful preseason. The team had 22 skilled players, but communication errors and failure to finish their shots caused them to lose their first three games of the season.

Their hardest loss had to be the one against rival Blake, who beat them 3-1. After that, Sherwood had a major turn-around. They had gotten their first goal of the season against the Bengals, and it was all uphill from there.

“We really started to connect after the Blake game, so we became successful in keeping the ball on the other team’s half and setting up shots for each other,” said leading goal scorer senior Meghan Nolan.

The next four games were dominated by the Warriors. They were aggressive, with the forwards creating many scoring opportunities with sharp passes, long crosses into the middle, and skillful maneuvers around the defense. Midfielders excelled at transitioning from defense to offense and vice versa by using short give-and-go’s as well as long passes. The defenders and goalkeeper effectively stopped any forwards before they could create scoring opportunities.

Though the Warriors have greatly improved, they aren’t perfect — their recent 2-1 loss to Magruder ended their win streak and gave them a 4-4 record. They will need lots of practice to stand a chance against B-CC and Churchill, who they will play in the last two games.

Tonight at 7:15, they will fight to reclaim their winning record at home against Blair. Come out and support the team