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Pac-10 In Print
• USC Women's Soccer USC Women's Soccer 2007
Written By: Kat Stolpa Another week has come and gone, and it is hard to believe that we are already 12 games into our 19-game regular-season schedule. This week marked the beginning of our "second season," as Ali likes to say. Throughout the week, we approached the upcoming Pac-10 games as a completely different season, and we closed the book on "Season 1," our nonconference schedule. While the bye week served us well in that we were able to work on our fitness and mental game, the week leading up to playing the Oregon schools was full of tactical work and getting our "game legs" back. Because we'd had the weekend off, we opened practice for the week on Monday instead of the usual Tuesday afternoon. While a few girls had to come in and out of practice due to class scheduling conflicts, we were able to play a full field scrimmage for the entirety of practice. The scrimmage was certainly helpful in working the soreness out of our legs, as many of us arrived at practice still hurting from the Coliseum run the previous Friday (much to the delight of Ali and Harold-they certainly had their share of laughs as we went through our warm-ups a LOT more stiffly than usual). Practice for the remainder of the week featured some hard work on tactical issues and field movement, capped off with a video session in our brand-new locker room on Thursday. This year, Ali really made an effort to provide the team with amenities that we had not been privileged enough to have in past years, mainly due to lack of space in Heritage Hall. When men's and women's basketball and volleyball moved to the Galen Center, Ali jumped on the opportunity and we were able to claim the locker room previously occupied by men's volleyball. The athletic department was kind enough to do a massive clean-up of the space (who knows what those boys had growing in their lockers…) and we are now the proud owners of a locker room complete with a leather couch and huge TV. The only problem now is tearing us away from watching all those Tivo-ed episodes of Larry King Live and The O'Reilly Factor when we should really be studying away in class (okay, maybe I got the shows confused, but you get the idea). After the week of practice we came into the first weekend of Pac-10 play ready to challenge the Oregon schools. In our Friday game, we came out strong and got the early goal against Oregon, which proved to be sufficient in locking down the win. Although it would've been nice if one of our three crossbar shots found the back of the net, we'll take the wins however they come. Sunday proved to be a fantastic showcase of our offense, as we netted five goals (from five different players) in shutting out Oregon State. The Spirit of Troy (the USC band) made another appearance and was quite effective in keeping the crowd in the game and creating a fun atmosphere. Up next this weekend is a trip to Northern California to take on Cal and Stanford. While we approach each opponent with the same mentality, these two in-state rivals always give us all we can handle and this weekend should be no different. In my three years as a Trojan, we have compiled a 1-1-1 record against both of these teams and it certainly would feel great to get back on the winning side of these rivalries. Stay tuned to see how the second week of Pac-10 soccer action shapes up--it should be another thriller. Thank you again for your support of USC Soccer and FIGHT ON! Kat Stolpa
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