Aug. 20, 2010
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Iowa vs. DePaul Photo Gallery | Postgame Interview With R. Rainey
IOWA CITY, IA – After a tough, 2-0 loss to DePaul Friday night at the Iowa Soccer Complex, the Hawkeye soccer team is already looking forward to its next challenge; Saturday’s practice.
Even though the Hawkeyes opened the 2010 season with a loss, Head Coach Ron Rainey and his student-athletes are already looking forward to tomorrow’s practice to fix the mistakes from Friday night’s contest.
“We really focus on our practice tomorrow,” Rainey said. “We will make demands of the players to continue to work with their strengths but to also work on getting rid of some of the negative repetitions. That starts in practice tomorrow.”
Junior midfielder Morgan Showalter believes Saturday will be a day to learn from a loss, but not focus on the result.
“It’s not about forgetting the loss,” Showalter said. “It’s about taking what happened in the loss. Don’t dwell on it, but fix it so those mistakes don’t happen again. There are a lot of little knick-knack things that can be addressed this week in practice.”
The Hawkeyes battled throughout the 90 minutes, but just couldn’t find the back of the net. Iowa saw numerous goal-scoring opportunities inside the 18-yard box, but the final touch just wasn’t around Friday night.
“We’ve got to play faster,” Rainey said. “That’s something we definitely have to do. I think we have to get synced up a little more from our midfield to our attack as well.”
The start of the 2010 season for the Hawkeyes was delayed for 1-hour and 20-minutes after a strong thunderstorm made its way through Iowa City. Despite the delay, Rainey was pleased with his squads’ energy and effort.
“It was interesting tonight,” Rainey said. “I thought both teams came out with a lot of energy and that’s attributed to them probably wanting to play somebody different. All those things tonight, first game of the season, sitting through a rain delay, the energy level was great for 90 minutes. We want to keep that up this week during practice and in next weekends’ games.”
Showalter confirmed her head coach’s comments on taking the field against an actual opponent for the first time this season.
The delay kind of killed the mood a little bit, but it definitely didn’t kill it once it came time to get out on the field and start warming up,” Showalter said. “The temperature was right, the team was excited, it just didn’t go our way tonight. It felt great to actually get back out on our field. It’s been a very long time since we’ve put on our Iowa jerseys and gone out as a full, new team.”
Showalter and her teammates will have another chance to put on the Black and Gold Nike uniforms at the Iowa Soccer Complex in seven days when the Hawkeyes host Northern Illinois Friday at 7 p.m. But before the next game comes practice Saturday, and it seems like Rainey and his team will be hard at work come tomorrow morning.