This season has called for many times of uncertainty. One week, all your games could be cancelled, and by the next week, you could be playing four. Despite the outcomes, San Marcos has kept its head up.
The Lady Rattlers fell to the Austin Maroons, 3-0, on Saturday morning at San Marcos Toyota Rattler Stadium. This comes after San Marcos earned a win against Austin Akins the previous night.
Even though his team didn’t score any goals, head coach Jason Carnley said that the final score doesn’t indicate how hard this match was, especially with the high wind speed they were dealing with.
“I have nothing bad to say today at all, we played great,” Carnley said. “The scoreboard doesn’t reflect how tough that match was … we fought them with 20-miles-per-hour wind in our face, so I’m very happy with our effort.”
The Lady Rattlers (5-5, 2-5 district) started working hard as soon as the game began. Their defense had to step it up to protect the goal because the Maroons were playing just as strong. In the opening minutes, Austin had a few shot attempts, but sophomore goalkeeper Caitlin Tims was able to make a save and a catch for the Rattlers.
The Maroons had a couple more looks at the goal throughout the first half, but it wasn’t until four minutes before halftime that they scored and took the lead, 1-0.
After halftime, Austin (4-7-1, 4-4-1 district) came back out with the same intensity. Within four minutes of the second half, the team scored its second goal. Throughout the rest of the game, the Lady Rattlers struggled to stay on top of the ball, while the Maroons had more attempts to score. With 12 minutes remaining in the game, Austin scored its third goal to increase its lead.
Carnley said that the one mistake his team made was controlling the ball and being able to put the ball in the back of the net.
“Ball control kind of hurt us a little bit today,” Carnley said. “That was a big, difficult thing for us today, we weren’t really able to attack the net. So, we had to play a lot of defense, and when that happens, you wear out the back line and that changes up your game. So, we’re just gonna have to get back to the drawing board and figure out how to get some goals.”
Carnley said that they talked about being the underdog in the district, so that translates into having the right attitude.
“We’re always the underdog here in San Marcos,” Carnley said. “It’s a good thing to have, you know, attitude of a champion, hustle like an underdog. If you can do that, everything’s gonna happen, and I can see that the past couple of weeks, post COVID, we’ve actually been picking things up, and if we do that next week against Del Valle, we’re gonna give it to them.”
The Lady Rattlers face the Del Valle Cardinals on Tuesday inside San Marcos Toyota Rattler Stadium at 6:30 p.m. Carnley expects his team to come out and score some goals.
“Del Valle is gonna be very similar to use, they’re gonna be aggressive. If we just possess the ball and move the ball around, we’re gonna get some goals.”
