.png&width=32&height=32&type=webp)
Lower's Lowdown
September 13, 2004 | Women's Soccer
Sept. 13, 2004
Every few weeks during the women's soccer season at Louisville, junior Gina Lower will share her thoughts with you in Lower's Lowdown. Gina is the U of L Student Athlete Advisory Committee President, a member of the Dean's List and All-Conference USA honoree in soccer.
The 2004 University of Louisville Women's Soccer team has gotten off to a great start! We had a wonderful time in England, with a record of 3-1-1. Mandy and Debo's diaries can give you a little taste of the team's experiences in England. Since our return from England, we have started school, and also started our regular season play. So far, we have compiled on impressive 3-1 start on the season. This is by far the best start for the team in my four years. The first win was against Butler. We had a week to recover from England and began training back on our own field. The heat was definitely a factor in training the first week. We were not used to the humidity because the temperatures were in the 60's and 70's throughout our stay in England. Needless to say, we made it through the week, and finished it off with a satisfying victory over Butler.
We returned to our second week of school and more training. Each week, we lift twice with Teena Murray, our new strength and conditioning coach. The workouts are definitely intense, but I believe that the hard work we have been putting in at the weight room has definitely shown come game time. The team is pretty happy to finally have someone in the weight room, although the workouts are challenging, everyone enjoys them. This week was the battle of the Ohio's. We were to play OU and OSU. Thursday we traveled to Athens, Ohio to play OU. We had control of the game for most of the time, except for a period of about 20 minutes where OU was able to score 2 goals to make it 3-2. We came out with a 5-2 win, but definitely learned the hard way to protect a lead. Jamie Craft and Lauren Podvin both scored 2 goals and Monique scored one as well. It was a good game, and we learned the things we still need to work on. Saturday night we faced 10th ranked Ohio State at Cardinal Park. We came out ready and dominated the first half. This game was by far the best game that has been played on Cardinal Park since I have come here. After the game I thought about the strides that have been made on my team from the fall of 2001 to now. Even just from last spring, we have gained so much. It just feels really good to be a member of a team that has started from the ground up and worked hard to be where we are now. We still have a lot to gain, but this program is headed in the right direction. We ended the first half tied at zero. We ended up giving up a goal on a corner kick. Even though we lost, it was an outstanding effort from the whole team. This game earned a team "player of the game" award.
Next up was Evansville. We had a week to recover and train to prepare for the next game. Monday was Labor Day, so we didn't have classes. It was nice to have an extended weekend. We trained and lifted as normal on Monday and I used the remainder of the day for studying. As we get deeper into the semester, classes get tougher. All of my classes now are in my major, accounting. It's tough to miss classes when we travel and the next few weeks we will be missing 3 days. All of my teacher's are very accommodating though. Most will let me make up the work either before I leave, or when I return. Our training sessions didn't go very well throughout the week. How you do in practice will dictate what you do in games. This is very true and was evident in the first half of our game against Evansville. The first half was not very pretty, we went into halftime with a 1-0 lead, but it should have been much greater. We scored 6 goals in the second half and played much better. A 7-0 win was a nice way to start the weekend. This coming week, we have 3 games, so it will be a test. Next weekend is family weekend, and we host Wright State and Xavier. The team is really excited because for a lot of the players, it's the only weekend their family will be here to visit and watch our games. Family weekend is my personal favorite weekend of the whole year. It's fun to have everyone's family in town and get to meet them.
