The Rise of our Girls 2002 FC Team
G02 FC Coach Jose Manuel Gomez brings us a fascinating look into the rise of his team with this written article. Take a quick glimpse as he speaks about the success and hardships his team have endured in the last few months.
In 2018, the team had a great season. I was the new head coach of the team with Coach Erica as my assistant. In the summer, we won the OC LA Galaxy Tournament, Blues Cup, our league season in Flight 1 East Europe Division and Flight 1 Playoffs. It was an incredible undefeated season!
After the National Cup in 2019, for different reasons, half of the team started leaving elsewhere, including assistant coach Erica. It was a difficult and very emotional time for most of the girls in the team.
For this new season, we have 18 players currently in our roster. We recruited new players to complete our team and try to be competitive again.
When we started our summer games, we were unlucky with injuries. Two girls tore their ACL, and a few more have different long term injuries. Our CRL league was difficult because the adaptation in that level is hard when half of the team is new, so pessimism was consuming everyone.
The girls and I had a team meeting and we talked about our goals. We knew that it was hard to be motivated with all of the injuries - but we knew that by practicing hard and believing in ourselves we could have a good season.
So far, we played Blues Cup and had a good tournament. In league, we are playing Champion Division in Flight 1 and are in first place and undefeated. We are having to play short on players most games - one, two or maybe three subs and we know that we need more players to be competitive but the girls are playing great and trying their best every single game.
We don’t know, if we will win the league or not, but for sure, we will be proud of ourselves. We play for all of our injured teammates.
The girls are having a good experience. It’s not always going to be perfect or how we want, but with dedication and doing everything for the team, all is possible.