Cards WSOC plays Miami Oh in exhibition -- MONDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

 2-1 RedHawks win Sunday over UofL WSOC

And, so it begins...

Louisville WSOC made the trek to the University of Miami (Ohio) to engage in a women's soccer exhibition. Oxford, OH is where Miami is located...about two hours from Louisville and due north of Cincinnati. For nine months a year, the town had an influx over close to 20,000 college students

Courtney Sirmans (pictured above) is the RedHawks head coach, and her squad downed the Cards 2-1.

That's about all we know about The scrimmage, since neither university tweeted about it, put anything in their sports website or alerted the local media. And...that's the way it goes with exhibitions, as a rule. Sure, it's great to win...but getting a good look at players in multiple combinations and situations seems to carry just as much, if not more weight in scrimmages..

And, the RedHawks were 9-5-6 last year. Their record was better than the Cards  (Louisville went 6-8-2) so, I don't think anyone envisioned a blowout   either way. 

In my talk with Coach Karen Ferguson Dayes a couple of weeks ago, she stressed that the Cards needed to find more scoring than they had last year. Let's hope the exhibition doesn't show what the rest of the season might bring. It's early and Sunday's action will give the Cards coaches an idea of what they need to do and give them some insight into what went good...and what didn't.We also wonder if both the prized European freshmen (Viktoria Wik and Fiona Gaiber) have arrived stateside yet.

 

I was tempted to text Coach KFD and Coach Sirmans about the exhibition and get their thoughts on the action. But, since the SID's didn't go to the match, my rationale was that I might want to pass on it...this early in the season. After all, we depend on the SID's of the various sports a lot at Louisville.  Making a move without informing them can burn you -- I found that out early. 

We guessing that the Cards got most of the roster on the pitch today and given the high 80's temperature, that was probably needed.

 

11 days until the season opener...when Indiana State come in to Lynn for a Thursday night tussle August 17th. Plenty of time to learn more and fine tune some things that the Cardinals coaches saw yesterday.. 

It was Hunter Norton's first contest as an associate head coach. He served as an assistant coach for UofL since 2015.

Welcome to the start of the 2023 season, folks. We do hope you'll join the Cardinal Couple crew at Lynn Stadium this summer and fall. 

paulie