100-Percent Cotton
11/11/2008 12:00:00 AM | Women's Soccer
Nov. 11, 2008
NACOGDOCHES, Texas - "100-Percent Cotton" is the weekly blog of senior defender Jessica Cotton. The blog has given fans a look at the inner workings of the SFA soccer program throughout the 2008 season. This will be the final entry of the year.
A SHOOTOUT? I never thought our season would be decided by a shootout, but that is exactly what happened Thursday. It was filled with every emotion, and, for the last time, here is the recap.
By coming off the weekend with two wins, we gave ourselves a great chance for a bye on Thursday. However, other teams in the conference also came away with big weekends and we ended up being the fourth seed and having to play on Thursday at 4:30.
We knew it was going to a crazy week, with our only true practice day on Tuesday. The practice was extremely normal, and had nothing out of the ordinary. Wednesday was our travel day, and we had quite the travel surprise.
With about thirty minutes left in the trip, we found out that our hotel plans had changed. Due to six soccer teams, their fans, and the SFA football team staying in Lake Charles that weekend, our hotel did not have enough rooms. So we fended for ourselves, and our coaches got us rooms at The Isle of Capri. It was a great change for us, and something that we were all looking forward to. We checked in, and then went straight to practice.
Practice was thrown off a bit by time changes, but we had a light, but intense practice. Straight after, we went to dinner at Pat's of Henderson. It was absolutely amazing ... well at least I thought it was. It was then back to the hotel to rest up for the game. Thursday, we had breakfast at the hotel buffet around nine that morning. Not much later, we were on our way to pre-game meal. We ate at Roly Poly, a sandwich and soup shop, and then had a little bit of down time before the game.
The game against Southeastern Louisiana was quite a game. We did not start the first twenty minutes of the game like we wanted to, but we finally picked it up. The first half finished in a scoreless tie. We came out for the second half very strong, knowing the Lions would be coming out just as strong as the first half. However, after a hard-fought second 45 minutes, the game was still scoreless. Overtime was a pair of ten-minute, sudden-death periods.
Yet still, after those twenty minutes, the score was still tied at nothing. We then went to a penalty kick shootout. Both teams would get five shooters, and the best of five would decide the winner. Without going too in depth, and reliving the whole thing, I will just leave you with the fact that Southeastern came away winning the shootout three-two. It was devastating for us, knowing we came that far, to lose in a shootout.
That shootout brought our season, and for six of us, our careers, to close. These years have been a rollercoaster of success, failure, and emotion; however, I would never trade any of it. I am extremely blessed to have gotten the opportunity to play soccer at SFA over these four years, and I am happy that the last four months I was able to give you all an inside look at our program.
I am now looking forward to two things: 1. Simply being another SFA soccer fan watching my friends play the game we all love, and, 2. Becoming a normal college student just trying to figure out when and how I am going to graduate.
-- SFA --
