Both the Fluvanna County and Western Albemarle boys and girls soccer teams couldn’t settle on a winner. The same went for the Albemarle boys against Mountain View. The ties were abundant. And that can be both a good and bad thing.
There aren’t many better teaching instruments than tie games, but at the same time, an undecided bout also leaves both teams with a lack of resolution both in terms of the score but also when it comes to momentum. Nobody gets excited about ties, but nobody is going to head into a downward spiral because of one either.
But if there is one thing to draw from last week’s inconclusive results it’s that the depth of soccer talent is relatively deep. On the boys side of the game, Albemarle has yet to lose – they have two wins and two ties − despite having graduated an exceptional amount of top notch players last season such as Ben Coffey and Michael Madigan. In their place, Steven Bargh and Micah Arseneault have stepped in. The Warriors and Flucos are also undefeated and are set to battle it out with Orange County and Charlottesville for Jefferson District supremacy.
On the girls side, the JD has most recently been a two team race — both Charlottesville and Fluvanna have beaten up on their competition a little — but perhaps Western and Monticello are ready to make things interesting based on the early season results.
And while it’s good to see that the depth of talented soccer teams seems to be growing rather than declining, it would be hard to imagine any coach, player or fan complaining if the rules of overtime were changed. Currently, teams go through a pair of timed extra periods that have to be played even if a team scores and that changes the mentality of the game. Sudden death overtimes reward or punish teams for playing either aggressively or conservatively. And perhaps no other overtime format can better prepare a team for the post season.
Solid keepers
Part of the reason for all these ties? Incredible goalkeeping.
That’s certainly the case on the girls side, where Fluvanna County’s Emily Brown and Western Albemarle’s Lexy Eckerle came up with several strong stops on each side during the Thursday game, but, more importantly, they came up with them at critical times.
Eckerle, who has been a fixture for the Warriors in goal over the last three years, is a big reason that Western coach Lesley Gourdet can play a number of freshmen in the lineup — Eckerle has the ability to erase mistakes.
Her senior leadership was critical to Western’s girls basketball team’s run to the regional semifinals, and it’s clearly already paying dividends for the Warriors (2-0-2). While Fluvanna came up with a late goal to knot the game at 1-1, Eckerle made several heady plays before that to end goals, and the equalizer came at point blank range on a perfectly placed crossing pass.
Brown has already exhibited incredible toughness this year. Against Monticello she was involved in a brutal collision with a Mustangs player and after a long delay left the field. She returned for the Flucos during the 1-1 tie with Western last week. She rose to the occasion in a game where Fluvanna was shorthanded due to other injuries and sickness, and she withstood Western’s consistent, spirited attack.
With the keepers in the area making things awfully tough on area scorers, low scoring ties could be the norm this year.
