On Saturday, April 18th the Westside girls soccer team will take on Papillion LaVista South for a rematch at home. The girls ended up playing Papio South in metros, but lost in a 0-1 thriller last week. Westside did a great job at metros, but got knocked out in the second round. Last year, the girls played Papio South and beat them 1-0 at their home field. The girls know that it will be a tough match, but also know they are capable of winning.
Luci Proctor is a senior on the varsity squad, and has been on the team since she was freshman. She talks about the ups and down of the game versus Papio south and how they will improve their game for Saturday to take the win.
“The game against Papio South went well as we had a lot of chances on goal and were organized defensively. We couldn’t finish on Saturday and there were many factors to the loss, but we are working on not making any excuses and showing up and practicing hard this week for the two big games we have in front of us,” Proctor said “We will make changes by calming down and playing as a team by connecting to get up the field and we are working on taking advantage of the opportunities we have so that come Saturday, we will dominate in the attacking third.”
Coach Nathan May talks about the rematch, including the emotions since the girls have already played Papio South before. He talks about what the girls will need to do to win, and how he thought the last game against Papio South went.
“Frankly I thought we were very poor in the first game, we were missing players on a bad run, and still finding our feet a bit as a team. We saw it as a big opportunity coming off a 4-1 win against Millard South and unfortunately came up very flat and did not take the chance,” May said. “The second game, we had an heir of desperation to us, we had just had a great performance in a loss against Pius. In this game we were dominant in every aspect except scoring goals which has been a story of our early season. Much improved from our first matchup. Our group showed great resilience after conceding with 3 minutes to go in the second overtime and digging deep to score with 1:59 to go in the second overtime before ultimately winning in a shootout. The win was far from perfect, but we showed a lot of character and the win can serve as our springboard for the run into state.”
The girls ended up losing last time, but the rematch will be a great game. They will need to focus on this and the next couple games of the regular season, before they head into districts. Coach Nathan May talks about what their mindset is going into the week.
“Game 1 – big opportunity, and Game 2 – desperation,” May said.
With 10 seniors on the team, the girls would like to use their advantage of having a team that knows each other so well. Proctor talks about what it means to play with her best friends for the last time.
“It means a lot to play with the team and all of the seniors because they are all my best friends. We are very close as a team and have been through the ups and downs that this program has had together. We all have the same idea of how we want this season to end since it is some of our last seasons playing this sport,” Proctor said.
The girls have a couple of regular season games left and want to make the most of them.
Catch the girls on the field against Papillion LaVista South on Saturday.
