Marble Falls girls soccer aims for first district win
CAPTION: Sophomore goalie Taylor Brydon has made numerous saves for the Lady Mustangs to keep them in District 26-4A matches. Photo by Ernesto Rivera
The Marble Falls High School girls soccer team and Fredericksburg played to a 1-1 tie Feb. 10 in District 26-4A play.
Though a goal wasn’t scored, Lady Mustangs head coach Marisa Miller indicated much of the match was played on her team’s side of the 50-yard. The fact coaches named sophomore goalie Taylor Brydon the player of the game indicates the defensive efforts the Lady Mustangs and their goalie played with to ensure a scoreless match.
“There’s no team in this district that’s going to be easy,” head coach Marisa Miller said. “They did dominate the game a lot more than we did, and that’s why Taylor got player the game. She made, I think, three pretty game-preserving saves for us.”
Meanwhile, the Lady Mustangs, who earned an 8-0-2 non-district record, are still searching for their first district victory.
“We’re down quite a bit of players, so we had to do a lot of adjusting on the back line,” Miller said. “And then also that caused us to adjust in the midfield as well. So we knew it was going to be tough for us to get comfortable with the new formation. We had a lot of people out of their normal positions. And yeah, we knew it was going to be tough.”
Two games remain in the first round beginning with a home contest against Fischer Canyon Lake Friday, Feb. 13, followed by a road trip to Bandera Tuesday, Feb. 17. The junior varsity plays at 5 p.m. and the varsity at 7 p.m.
While many teams deal with injuries throughout their seasons, not every squad competes in a district like 26-4A. Three members — Wimberley, Canyon Lake and San Antonio Davenport — are ranked in the top 20 of many polls across the state.
Their rankings indicate talent, experience and depth.
But the flip side is that the next group of three — New Braunfels Long Creek, Fredericksburg and Marble Falls — mirror one another with equal amounts of depth, talent and perhaps experience.
And Miller indicated that’s what coaches are drilling into the Lady Mustangs daily by creating practices that challenge the players’ minds as well as their bodies.
“You can’t go into a game and think that you don’t have to work as hard as you do against these top state-ranked teams,” she said. “And so we’ve been working a lot about mentally preparing for every game that we’re going into and what that means. As athletes, they’re learning a lot in the last couple of games about the mental side of this tough district.”
And teaching players to compete daily — that practices require a balance between getting the work done and having fun — is a challenge.
“You’re always learning how to compete in a district like this, and we have to take every game seriously,” the coach said. “They have to compete in practice every single day. They have to compete in every single game and making sure that we stay at that high level – that’s something we’re learning. We’re learning how to be competitors, and it’s going to take time. You have to train the mind game as much as you train on the field.”
The good news is that these Lady Mustangs have shown a desire to succeed and a willingness to put in the work, Miller said.
“The girls have been really receptive to it,” she said. “They’re working hard on both sides of the field. There’s just so much more to it when you play these teams that are very talented and very stacked with players that have been competing for a really long time at this level. We have to work on our effort every single day in every game. As long as we can turn around and just keep that effort like we did against these top teams, they can compete in this district. We’ve shown it, but we just have to lock in mentally.”
Marble Falls ends the first round with a road trip to Bandera (3-13, 0-5) Tuesday, Feb. 17, with the junior varsity playing at 5 p.m. and the varsity at 7 p.m.
