Senior Girls Soccer

SG Soccer: Humbling Loss in Lenn

9/25/2026

By Erik Van Dyke

We travelled to BCS on our first road trip of the season, and the wheels fell off. The Red & White were humiliated this past Wednesday by their longtime rival, not only by an alarming 6-1 final score, but more importantly by the way we reacted to adversity.

Now, to be fair, there was a lot of adversity:

The field our hosts chose for this critical ETIAC league game was laughably small – I think it was Sofia who asked me if we were going to play 7 v 7 – which negated our numerical advantage in the midfield and rewarded the tight touch of the BCS midfielders.
The referee started the game by incorrectly ordering our defenders out of our own 18-yard box on our goalkicks, and it did not get much better for your Spartans from there.
Niggling injuries – it was our second full 80-minute game in a 24-hour span – got worse enough that key players had to take themselves out of the game in the second half.
The bounces did not go our way, i.e. with the game still in issue in the first half, we had a goal called back on an incorrect offside call and then another goal called back when the ref was too far away to see that the ball had indeed crossed the goal line, if only barely.
Heck, we even got heckled and trash-talked (and poked in the shoulder!) at McDonald’s after the game – talk about adding insult to injury.

But that’s sport. Sometimes things don’t go your way. But how you react is what matters. That’s the point! That’s when you dig deep. That’s when real character shines through. That’s when you square your shoulders, huddle with your teammates, and rise above.

But not today. We got rattled. We complained. We tried less, so our positioning suffered and we stopped covering for each other. We became undisciplined, so we started fouling. If you’re focused on feeling hard done by, you are clearly NOT focused on the things you CAN control.

The good news is this is only one game. And, to be honest, with how bad our touch on the ball was (we know what to work on in practice!), we were going to lose this game anyway. But now we can learn from this. This may well be the most important lesson we learn this year: real athletes control what they can control, they never let outside factors affect their intensity.

More good news: Jordyn was a bright spot at wing, Mylee had her best game of the season at striker, and Etsuho was a warrior, playing bravely and aggressively in her first game in goal.

But let’s never forget what we learned this game. When adversity hits, do not let your shoulders sag. Instead, square your shoulders, bear down, and stand together. Anyone can try hard when things are going great. It takes real character to give your best when the wheels are falling off.

Let’s learn from this!

Coaches Van Dyke & Goodsell

Back