A beautiful early evening welcomed the 2 teams. Only the chilly wind prevented us from calling it a perfect one for a football match.

The SVC girls looked great and sharp on the field, with Dewi watching from the bench. Both teams started playing pretty fast trying to maximize the spaces in the wings. Tess and Alexandra began to dart the Graaf back line.

The Graaf boys were quite fast from every angle, and made Rosalie, Joy and Ángela sweat right off. Annabelle and Milou did their best finding open spaces for Tess and Alexandra to gallop towards the goal.

Alexandra´s goal (1-0) came after a short sprint and a bit of luck after the ball touched a defender´s heel.

Few minutes afterwards Graaf scored (1-1) a 20 meter powerful shot that the wind made it impossible for Emilie. Dewi jumped onto the field and Tess recharged batteries.

Our keeper had a fantastic evening and quite a few hard shots by Graaf midfielders were blocked with speedy hands that came from nowhere.

The girls gulped down water in the first trinken pause, announcing how physically demanding the game would be. Tess came back and Rosalie saved energy on the bench.

The second quarter started and Graaf scored (1-2) with a hard shot unreachable for Emilie. The SVC response came with a typical lightning sprint by Tess and beating (2-2) the keeper low. Time for Ángela to cool down on the bench.

Alexandra saw a pass for Tess that nobody else in the Graaf team did. However, this time Tess lost her duel with the keeper. Some Graaf players´ faces started to show some surprise
with the quality of SVC combinations, and cocerns about who could win the match. Meanwhile, Emilie continued with her show.

Anyway, Graaf scored (2-3) again with a powerful shot from the right wing. It became apparent that Graaf chances to win the match would come from exploiting their physical advantage in long distance shots.

Joy and Rosalie were immense running back to close spaces and blocking Graaf attempts to get close to Emilie.

At halftime, the snack was gone quickly, indicating calories were being burned at a high rate. Annabelle on the bench.

Emilie kept saving impossible balls, while Milou and Dewi found spaces for more skillful slaloms by Tess and Alexandra. However, it was Graaf who scored twice (2-5), again maximizing their superiority in long distance shooting.

More liters of water for the girls before the last quarter. Arjan coached the team to make them believe the victory was feasible.

Tess´ faith pursuing a loose ball in the midfield turned the scoreboard to 4-5. Then one of the most beautiful plays of the game came from Annabelle, who did not give up a ball on Graaf´s back line, close to the left corner. From there, she managed to dribble 2 players with both feet, and darted off for the goal. She unfortunately was slightly tripped by a defender and could not make a final pass.

From this moment on the tank reserve signal of most SVC girls came on. However, the Graaf boys did not slow down and found lots of space between defenders and Emilie. Two more goals on their side came (4-7) before the end of the game.

The girls keep competing, exploring the limits of their both physical and mental endurance, and most importantly, learning to believe in how much more they can improve.