Your future, our focus
Injury-Riddled Squad Falls To LCCC, Western Wyoming
For bits and pieces of the games against Laramie County and Western Wyoming community colleges last weekend, the Northwest College women’s soccer team showed flashes of brilliance, looking as focused and talented as first-year head coach Aaron Miller knows his team is.
Now imagine how good the Lady Trappers could be with a full roster of players.
In what’s become a season-long trend, the NWC women’s side once again took on a pair of Region IX opponents with no subs, with predictable results: A 6-0 loss to LCCC Friday and a 6-2 loss to Western Saturday.
“Injuries have been an ongoing thing, and after last weekend we have some new ones, so we’re really just trying to manage all that stuff,” Miller said. “When this team is on, it’s on. When they’re fragmented and off, it’s unfortunate, because it’s a really good group. Certainly more numbers would help the situation, but when the ones we do have can play, they’re fun to watch.”
LCCC 6, LADY TRAPPERS 0
The Lady Trappers battled hard against LCCC (7-0-1, 4-0 in Region IX play) Friday afternoon, but with no depth on the bench and several play stoppages because of the weather, the Golden Eagles proved more than NWC can handle.
“I think the rain delays interrupted a lot of our energy. We’d start playing really well against them [LCCC], hanging tough and we’d have to stop the game,” Miller said. “We’d get them back out on the field to warm up, they’d warm up, then we’d have to pull them off again. It was hard. But hats off to LCCC, they’re a pretty good team.”
WESTERN WYOMING 6, LADY TRAPPERS 2
The game against Western (5-4, 2-2 in Region IX play) got off to a promising start, as Lady Trapper midfielder Ali Kreidet’s goal in the 13th minute gave NWC an early 1-0 lead.
Western Wyoming brought the game back to even 10 minutes later off the foot of Kylee Manning, though Northwest would re-take the lead just a few minutes later on a goal by Sapirah Broussard.
“If you give Sapirah 40 yards of space and a good ball in front of her, more than likely she’ll have a good opportunity to score,” Miller said.
Western scored in the final minute of the first half to make it 2-2 at the break. The second half was all Western, however, as the Lady Trappers ran out of steam.
“We started off real strong, probably just a little bit of that not having a whole lot of depth hurt us into the second half,” Miller said. “We just ran out of gas again.”
He said the team was excited in the days leading up to the LCCC and Western games because the team had all 15 girls on the roster practicing at the same time.
“That was probably the first time since day one that we had them all out there,” he said. “But then Ali [Kreidet] went down with a concussion and Ashlynn [Cornelison] had to come out of the Western game at halftime. And we have a couple of other injuries that keep getting re-aggravated.”
The Lady Trappers are back on the bus this weekend for another long road swing against a pair of Region IX opponents in Colorado. They’ll take on Trinidad State (2-5, 1-3 in Region IX play) Friday and Otero Junior College (3-6, 1-3 in Region IX play) Saturday. It will be a homecoming of sorts for Miller, who coached at Trinidad State for six seasons.
“Trinidad is certainly a team that we can hang with, and Otero has some good players,” he said. “We should be able to hang tough in both contests, even with another long bus trip.”