Patrick Baker Great Quotations

Our focus to this point has been South Carolina because a lot of natural attention has been paid to the Florida game already. But, the Florida matchup is meaningless if we don¹t play well on Friday. We are happy to be hosting again this weekend and hopefully we can get another great crowd, play well and score some goals.

I think we were pretty sharp in that second game. Mercer was at a little bit of a disadvantage because they had to play back-to-back due to the schedule, but again we had a couple of goals we can be proud of. Missy finished hers nicely and Ali scored on some more great combination play.

With the U-17 Region III ODP team coming to Athens, it is a great opportunity for our fans to see some of the best young players in the south region. Actually, there will be two-to-three future Georgia Bulldogs from our 2006 signing class on display that night, which will be great to see.

That weekend is a tremendous opportunity for us. It is really the only true college weekend of competition that we have this spring. We play two very good teams in UAB and the traditional powerhouse of North Carolina. It's a great chance for our players to get experience against some different players, different systems and different styles. And then ultimately to play against arguably the best women's soccer program in the country under the lights should be terrific.

That weekend we will be hosting all of the Div. I schools in the state of Georgia. And to round out the field of six teams will be Team Boca U-17 Club Team. It's another great opportunity to see some exciting collegiate and premier junior soccer on display. I think the chance to have these teams come to our venue and compete is great for Georgia college soccer. Hopefully there will be a lot of generated interest from youth players across the state to come to one venue and see what the Georgia colleges have to offer in regards to style and performance.

We are playing a lot of different teams with various styles this spring. I think the spring schedule is going to help us a lot. We're not going to get caught up in wins and losses. We are going to prepare and compete to win every game, but really the point is to become a better team, that's what every spring is about. Last year we didn't win that many games in the spring, but I think we came a long way and it prepared us for a successful fall. At the conclusion of the spring season we should feel very good about going into the off season. I hope we make the same strides this spring that we made last year. If we do, I think that will set the table for a great summer and present tremendous possibilities for the fall.

When we defend well and create opportunities on offense, that's really our recipe for success. Once again we had great activity and pressure on the ball. We matured a little bit tonight, we had a greater sense of gamesmanship and clock management toward the end. We saw some good things from the whole team.

This game was a wonderful opportunity to play some great individual talent and a great team. We did some good things tonight but we also made some mistakes. Good teams will make you pay for those mistakes and North Carolina did. Overall I'm very pleased with the effort. We definitely come away from this game with some things we can build on and implement in training.