Mew's Views: Round 2 - One Goal
Senior midfielder Sam Mewis is back for season two of Mew's Views. Mewis helped lead UCLA to its first-ever NCAA Championship in 2013 and returned for her senior season with the added arsenal of experience playing with the full U.S. Women's National Team under her belt. Mewis, the 2014 Pac-12 Player of the Year and espnW's National Player of the Year, has scored 91 points on 30 goals and 31 assists in her UCLA career.
Last Friday was our first NCAA tournament game of the 2014 season. With a 5-0 win over USD, we were able to secure ourselves a spot in the second round against Harvard. The 5 goals came from 5 different people, a feat that we are pleased with! Abby Dahlkemper got us on the board with a header from a Rosie White corner kick. We have been working so hard on our efficiency on corners, with the dedicated coaching of Louise Leiberman, and it felt really good to put one away! Abby returned the favor to Rosie just a minute later, who finished her chance from the top of the box.
And then the magic happened… Katelyn Rowland made a save and threw the ball out to Taylor Smith on a counter-attack. Taylor proceeded to dribble three defenders and score an upper-90 goal directly from Katelyn’s throw. It was one of the most exciting goals of the year. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch it here.
The second-half scoring was rounded out by Kylie McCarthy and myself. The game was a great first round matchup for us. Now we are looking ahead to our upcoming second round game. Drake Stadium will host Pepperdine and Illinois State on Friday at 5pm before our game vs. Harvard at 8pm. The winners of those two games will continue on to the next round and will face off at Drake Stadium again on Sunday at 3pm.
We are very excited for Friday’s matchup and think that it will be a challenge to play a team we haven’t seen yet this year from a different part of the country. Harvard will be sure to bring their best game, and we are very busy preparing ourselves for them.
The preparation started on Saturday with a delicious home-cooked meal at the house of Belden Long’s aunt Michelle in Villa Park. Michelle and her family were so gracious to have a large group of the team over and to serve us dinner (and dessert!) We headed over early in the afternoon and watched a couple of other NCAA tournament games before sitting down to devour everything they had prepared for us. It was a lot of fun, and we are very thankful to Michelle for her hospitality and never-ending UCLA spirit!
We had a great, tough session as a team on Sunday and another one on Monday. A lot of progress was made during both practices, as we were able to work on some specific things, given that it was only a one-game weekend. As usual, we took Tuesday off to recover and replenish, preparing ourselves for a few more days of training before Friday’s match. Wednesday’s training was another productive session, and the team is feeling positive and excited about our upcoming game!
We hope that you can make it out to UCLA this Friday for the game! Go Bruins!