“Not only was this weekend physically tough, but it was mentally tough as well. Wednesday night’s game against Xavier was awesome. We put things together and finally played how we knew we could for all 90 minutes. We definitely showed the Atlantic 10 what we are made of. Everyone did their part and we came out with a huge win. There wasn’t much time to celebrate because the next morning at about 6 am we would be leaving for San Francisco.”

“The Xavier game ended at about 9:30 Wednesday night. We went to the equipment room and got just about everything we needed for the weekend. I got something to eat with my parents and then went home to pack. By the time I settled, and did some homework, it was too late to go to bed. We had to be ready to go at about 5:45 the next morning. The last time I looked at my clock it was 4:30 am. I think I got about a half an hour of sleep that night. I was lucky because I know that some of my teammates didn’t get any sleep that night.”

“Our flight was nice because it was almost empty. We all got our own rows to lie down on so we could catch up on some sleep we had not gotten the night before. The only time I got up was to go to the bathroom. Most of us slept the 5 hours it took to get there. When we got to San Francisco we went to our hotel, ate, and got ready for practice. We had about an hour of practice, working on finishing and dead balls for the majority of it. Later that night we had a team meeting and got the scouting report for Santa Clara. We were told both what it would take physically and mentally to compete with them.”

“Friday seemed to come fast, but we were ready. In the locker room before the game, we went around and each player stated personal and team goals for that day. It seemed to work, because for about 83 minutes we stood 1-1 with the 4th ranked team in the country. Physically, they were faster and had better skills than us, but mentally we were doing the things we had to, to compete. A few mental errors, which have been killing us all year, on the defensive side lost the game for us in the last 7 minutes. In the end we were happy with the way we played, despite the fact that we lost, we stuck with Santa Clara and didn’t even play our best soccer.”

“Saturday we went to Alcatraz and shopped for most of the day. Sunday morning we got the scouting report and were ready to play. Stanford would be as tough, if not tougher for us than Santa Clara. Well, they were, and we learned a lot from that game. First of all, we must stop making mental errors in the back. We also need to continue to work at playing together, all on the same page, with the same goals and same approach to each game. We took the red eye home and arrived in Dayton at about 7 in the morning, with tests and classes waiting for us.”