Hello Everyone,

4 down 1 to go. We piled the girls onto a bus, and headed north to Sonoma State in Rohnert Park, which is Kai's alma mater, and a school that is very close to my hometown. Again, we wanted to take the team on the road to practice dealing with some adversity, but we got a bit more than we bargained for this time.

The adversity we expected was a 6+ hour bus ride, playing on the road, eating food on the road, and maybe not getting good sleep in uncomfortable surroundings. What we couldn't plan for was losing two of our best players late in the week (1 for school purposes, and one to a minor injury), our hotel not getting/remembering our reservations, and a referee (in my totally unbiased opinion) that made some questionable calls against us.

In the end, it was a 3-0 win for the Gauchos, which made the long bus ride home much more bearable. Sonoma State is a top Division II program who play in the best conference on the West Coast called the CCAA. They are coached by a great friend of mine, Luke Oberkirch, and they are in the playoff mix every year.

We again played 3 periods of 30 minutes a piece, and scored a goal in each of the periods. The first goal was scored by Kailyn Kugler off of a 2nd chance from a shot that Michelle Russell crushed off of the cross bar. Goal number 2 was the end result of a combination play between 2 of our central midfielders. That goal was scored by Jacqui Simon, from a nice final pass from Sami Svrcek. The final goal was scored again from a second chance off the cross bar. Jacqui Simon cracked a free kick from about 25 yards out that hit the cross bar, dropped to Jesse Edmonds, and she stuck away her chance.

You should recognize some of the names from past recaps, because Jacqui and Kailyn have done a lot of scoring for us this Spring. This recap wouldn't be complete without listing a couple other players. Due to the fact that we lost 2 players last week, we were forced to play some players out of their normal role, and they did very well. Julia Speace, who is a freshman, has played as an outside back all year. She was forced to play most of the day in the middle, and she was solid. Sarah Stoltz was forced to drop from the midfield onto the back line for a shift or two, and Stacy Myrick played all 90 minutes missing 2 days of training late in the week due to the flu. Stacy is a warrior, and we are lucky to have her. (More adversity faced...I guess.) Tammy Lenham our keeper was solid all day, and recorded the shut-out. Finally, Michelle Russell did a tireless amount of work up top, and got us going with the first goal.

I do have one regret on the weekend, and that was I didn't get to spend nearly enough time with the great group of people who came out to watch and support the team. There were committed recruits and their families, boosters, alumni, and many of my friends and family at the game. It was great seeing you all, and I can't thank you enough for taking the time to come out and watch the team play. Again, I'm sorry I couldn't spend more time with all of you to get caught up.

Looking forward, we have a HUGE weekend coming up! Next Saturday April 26th is our final Spring play date. We kick off against Cal State LA at 10 AM at home in Harder Stadium, and then we play our Alumni team immediately following at 11:30. Our men's soccer team has organized 3 different games following our games also in Harder. On Sunday we are holding our 5th Annual Women's Soccer Golf Tournament at Sandpiper Golf Course.

Next weekend will basically be the end of our Spring fundraising efforts. It isn't too late to get involved with any of the 3 fundraisers if you are interested. We are still selling raffle tickets for someone to win a Hyundai Tiburon, our Auction Web site is will be closing down this week, so, make sure you go back on line if you have an interest in bidding (http://ucsbwsoccer.cmarket.com), and it isn't too late to get involved with our golf tournament. We are still looking for golfers and sponsors of any level.

With a little bump over the next week or so, we are looking at @ $30,000.00 raised over the past 4 months. Thanks in large part to all of you who have given so much to our program, it looks like Europe next summer for the team will become a reality. Thanks again.

Have a great week, and go Gauchos.

Paul.