Amazing Day 2 Ends with Win

The morning started off on Rodeo Drive. Much to the delight of Ms. Bryde and Mr. Fitch, only about half the team pronounces it like the locals do. It added a certain je ne sais quoi to the whole Beverly Hills adventure. Parents will be pleased to learn that the coaches didn't spot any shopping bags from the walkabout. They also would like give a big thumbs up to the lavender lattes at the local coffee shop.

From Beverly Hills, it was off to Hollywood. The Hollywood Walk of Fame was only outshone by Target. In this instance, there were shopping bags. Local fast food not available in Vancouver was also sourced. We then ripped up the hill (crawled actually, as anyone who has spent time in LA will attest to the traffic) to get our photos of the iconic Hollywood sign, where we narrowly avoided being in a Bollywood TicToc video.

Once at the stunning campus of Harvard-Westlake School, the athletes did an excellent job of getting game ready. Several parents may have caught the live stream, which was kindly provided by the host school, but a brief synopsis follows...

LFA came out flying. There's no doubt that we continue to adapt to the surface, which was again the soccer/football style "field turf". The game makes our typical possession game much more challenging, so we adapted some of our strategies to play a bit more run and gun than we'd normally prefer. But we came out running and gunning. Really much of this quick transition is owed to our back line, which has been Claire, Bea, Charlotte, AnnYee and Pen mostly so far.  It wasn't long before our counter attack resulted in a scramble in the D. With a wonderful tenacity, our girls were all over the ball and it ended up in the back of the net. For all the fight, it was Claire who had the deft hands and lovely, quick reverse stick push... and we think it was probably her goal...

Up 1-0, we really put the push on. With the forays into their circle, we were rewarded with a short corner. You really don't want to give up short corners to our team. We're just too clinical. While the HW goalie made a lovely save on the initial shot by Amy, it fell to our injector and Eva slammed it home. Now up 2-0, it felt like we were rolling, but HW simply has too much skill--especially through their midfield. The chances started to lean towards HW but they had a problem--Kaelen was in a zone. There was nothing that was getting by Kaelen today. Save after save must have been frustrating for the opposition, but so too were the aggressive clears Kaelen was all over. It was a goalie clinic.

Still, you give up chances and things can go wrong. Late in the third quarter, a reverse hit by HW glanced off their own player standing in front of Kaelen and found the back of the net. It's funny how 2-1 feels so different than 2-0. The intensity heightened, but so too did LFA's tenacity. There was some really lovely plays along our wide-sides: Michaela, Abby and Jess (and Sofia for a wonderful spell) did some heavy lifting to get the balls through to our forwards. Greycen continues to find open space and had a couple of lovely chances. Addie seemed to be all over the ball. Mattea, with mum in the stands (!), made a couple of beautiful set-up passes. A deflection by Sienna was only thwarted by a remarkable HW save. 

Then, midway through the fourth, HW gave up another collection of short corners to LFA. On a called play, Eva found herself on the baseline with the intended pass covered and slotted it home on the nearside in the smallest of spaces. The two goal lead seemed to put our group at ease. While HW didn't give up for a moment, taking the play to us right to the final buzzer, our stalwart defenders and Kaelen held the line. 

A big thanks to our lovely hosts. A great game of hockey in a wonderful location! We've transferred down to Huntington Beach area for the next few days of our tour... but the biggest challenge awaits! The #2 ranked team in the state is on the agenda for tomorrow!