CALLAO — Don’t let the silence fool you (because it had to be silent), but the mood was palpable inside the Coliseo Miguel Grau. The national teams of the United States of America and Mexico were ready to perform in the first goalball match of the day.
The game plan for Team USA Women? Simple, according to coach Jacob Czechowski,
“Mexico plays a different defense, they play a hyper defense that we don’t see a lot, so we knew that we would have to change up our offense a bit in order to make sure that we maximize our strengths as what we perceived as some of the areas that we thought that we could score.” He added, ”I thought the girls did a good job of that, and accuracy got better as the half went on and we were able to capitalize on those things.”
It seemed to be going the United States’ way in the first half leading 8-1 as #5 Amanda Dennis had three goals including one penalty throw for a goal, which she was personally proud of, telling of how she had to prepare herself mentally for the shot,
“I don’t take a lot of penalty shots for the team I feel, like I just wanted to make myself feel confident about myself feeling the penalty shot. So kinda getting into that zone, and saying ’I got this’ and that ‘I can do it’ too.’”
The lone first half Mexican goal came from the hands of Maria Angulo, who would also add one goal in the second half.
The team then switched sides but it was more of the same from #1 Team USA, handling their business and add two more goals. finishing off Mexico by a soore of 12-2.
It was the defense that made the difference for the U.S. Women’s Goalball Team, said Maybal Huking who had two goals on the day, adding,
“I think what is great about our team is that all of us can play a lot of different positions, and we are able to work defensively all over the court, we had a couple of little things here and there, but we were able to mesh as a team… it was good.”
The United States’ Lisa Czechowski who had four goals in the match was able to block a penalty shot from Mexico’s Tania Jimenez.
Team USA Women’s Goalball plays tomorrow at 12:00pm vs. Brazil in Round Robin Format.
For more information and the rules of goalball, click here.
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