Best performance, but Staffs women’s losing run continues
Staffordshire women’s team produced their best performance of their debut season as they lost to East Anglia 17-4.
Two goals from Nicola Steadman and one each from Anna Balonier and Karina Gale increased Staffs goals tally for the season two times over.
In the opening quarter East Anglia came out strongly and quickly took a three goal lead.
Staffs reply came minutes after, as their opening goal of the game came from a nice quick stick move from Steadman giving the East Anglia keeper no time to react.
With East Anglia trying to increase their lead, Staffs got a second from a stunning Anna Balonier individual run, which is becoming a hard move to beat.
In the second quarter Steadman got her second of the game with a low shot deep in the East Anglia fan. However with Staffs having their best league game of the season, East Anglia scored three goals before half time to give the visitors a 9-3 lead.
The third quarter saw no goals from the hosts as East Anglia grabbed five more goals to increase their lead from six to eleven.
The final quarter saw Staffs concentration go down as they knew the game was lost. Despite that Staffs managed to get a fourth goal. A long individual run from Karina Gale on the right wing ended with a thunderous shot in to the top left corner.
Women’s captain Roberta Spain was pleased with the ever-improving girls, but now knows targets are to be set for the second half of the season.
“As we're in the first competitive year of Women's lacrosse, in a brand new league, my initial aim was to bring together girls who wanted to get fit and have fun while learning a new sport. Having to learn the rules and basics of lacrosse was stressful but rewarding to see such fast improvements. The final scores of the games don't in any way reflect the girl’s standard as we've been up against many aggressive experienced teams, well established in the league. No matter the score, the team have always played to the best of their ability and really enjoyed each game.”
“Three quarters of our team are fresh to lacrosse this year and to get to the standard we've been playing at recently, improvement has been enormous. The girls continue to improve with each match played as they get more and more confidence within themselves and their abilities.”
“We're in a good starting league as we've found each match has been challenging, pushing the team as a whole to improve. It's great playing the stronger sides as our girls can watch how they move with the ball and are positioned as a team.”
“The main target we're working on for the second half of the season is aggression. Each team we've played has really wanted the ball, fought hard to get it where as we're still very timid as a team. Our goal score card has been slowly increasing as confidence is growing and for the second half of the season I want to see closer matches with only a few goals difference to reflect our improvement and boost morale.”