Sept. 23, 2011
WASHINGTON - Senior Kelly D'Ambrisi (Trumbull, Conn./Lauralton Hall Academy) has been a vital cog for the Georgetown women's soccer team since her arrival on campus. The midfielder has earned All-BIG EAST honors and helped the Hoyas reach the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament last season. Throughout the year, D'Ambrisi will be contributing her thoughts for a blog on soccerbanter.org, which can also be seen on the Georgetown Athletics website. www.guhoyas.com. Here was her post heading into the team's final non-league games and following the opening of BIG EAST Conference play last weekend.
"Our last weekend of non-BIG EAST games is coming up. At the beginning of the season, we go through our schedule game-by-game and set goals for where we need to be in order to make the NCAA's and have the season we'd hoped for. Going into this weekend, we knew we needed to get two wins or we would have a huge set back. It has rained literally every day this week and our grass field is in no condition to be played on.
"We've practiced on the turf all week, which reminds me of the lovely spring practices. We are always on the turf beginning in January or February at 7 a.m.. They sometimes have to turn the lights on because the sun hasn't come up yet. Anyway, it's all I think about when we practice on the turf. We've been there all week at 7:30 p.m., definitely more tolerable than the morning spring practices. Our practices have looked sharp; we're able to move the ball around on the turf fairly quickly. Many of the games on Friday in the area were getting cancelled but Dave (Nolan) decided to play ours against James Madison University (JMU) on our turf field. We have never played a game on the turf because it is much narrower than our grass field. We were all pumped to play our first night game at Georgetown.
"The turf field is in the center of campus, everyone walking by can see us playing... rather than on the top of the hill where it can be a bit isolated. We started the warm-up fired up and ready to go. The music was blaring and there were actually fans coming into the stands that probably heard the music and wanted to have a nice power hour before going out later. This year we are a part of the Girls Can Club, which is a buddy program for young aspiring girl soccer players. Each of us is paired up with a youth player, around 10 or 11 years old. We act like their "big sister," emailing back and forth and talking to them after games. On Friday night, I heard someone calling my name before the game; I looked up into the stands and saw my "little sister" with a big poster with "Go Kelly #17" written on it. It meant a lot to see this little girl cheering for me, it reminded me of myself when I was younger. We all wanted this game in front of the rowdy fans and under the spotlights; we played JMU off the field. The ball was moving so quickly on the turf and we were able to play at a pace too fast for JMU. We won 2-0. We had a very light practice on Saturday in preparation for our Sunday game against St Francis. We came out soft and too comfortable against them. We kept them in the game until the end of the second half when Mary Kroenig scored a header off a cross from Christina O'Tousa. Mary is an outside back and I'm pretty sure it was her first goal ever... She is 6 feet tall and headed the ball into the back of the net like a perfectly placed PK. We were able to pull out the win but it was certainly not our best game.
"Monday's are off. Thank God! I'm 20 years old and feel like I'm 50 after a weekend of games. We practiced on the turf this week to try to get used to it for Seton Hall's lovely turf field. I'm not a big fan of turf; again, it hurts my body in my old age. We left for Seton Hall Thursday at 3 p.m. We didn't get out of Maryland until around 4:30, normally a 30-minute trip. There was a ton of traffic during rush hour (shocking) and we were getting restless on the bus. The "snacks" of apples and bananas were just not cutting it, I'm pretty sure we each had our weekly dosage of fruits and fiber... I immediately regretted my decision to sit right next to the bathroom on the bus, always a mistake on long bus rides. We finally arrived at Seton Hall around 8:30 p.m. It was about 50 degrees which was a shock coming from 80 degree weather in D.C. So all the wimps scrambled under the bus to get any sort of warm clothing we had. We practiced quickly until the lights on the field were shut off at 9:30, Dave wanted us to get a feel for the surface we would be playing on... it's a tough place to play at.
"We always have a hard time playing Seton Hall at Seton Hall; their field is much smaller than ours and it's turf... my freshman and sophomore year we tied them at Seton Hall but last year when we played them at home we handled them quite well. We came out flat, not enough energy. Not enough people had that hunger to win, to get into tackles and be physical which is very important against a scrappy team like Seton Hall. We were tied 2-2 at the end of regulation and they scored in the first period of overtime. This loss was devastating. As a senior, losing our first Big East game of the season was a big wake up call. I want to make this season the best one yet and starting Big East play in this manner is not good enough. As hard as it was to forget about this game, we needed to move past it and focus on Rutgers on Sunday... now a must win game. On the bright side, we did have a tailgate after the game hosted by KK Brenn's mom. I was kind of disappointed she did not bring any wax to wax our eye brows like she did before last year's Rutgers game... but her desserts made up for it. It was also great to see a senior teammate who graduated last year, Michaela Buonomo. She came to the game with her family and brought their famous soft pretzels from Philly for us. The food helped most of us move past the loss.
"We were so focused and ready to go for Sunday against Rutgers. We have only beaten them once since I've been here, my freshman year... and with my crazy mom from the Garden State giving me pep talks on how to defeat New Jerseyans, there are not many teams that I want to crush more than those New Jersey teams. I wanted this bad. We knew we had to win this game if we wanted to keep up in the RPI rankings, and ultimately keep our goal of making the NCAA's in reach... One bad loss like Friday night can kill a team's chances at the tournament. We were also keyed up because it was our first home game since the passing of one of the biggest women's soccer supporters, Dr, Christopher Joyner. He came to every home game he could and was always there for all the players. He was like a father to those players whose families lived far away. We wore black arm bands for him at this game. He was with us and we won this one for him. We came out fast on Sunday; we were physical, first to every ball, winning tackles. We played very well; Rutgers scored first, and early, but we responded well, got right back in it, and wound up winning 4-1. It was so great to finally play well and beat a very good team. I think we are finally coming together as a team and beginning to realize our full potential."
