After three years of leasing, this year’s Elmwood Park seniors are ready to take ownership.
Tigers senior forward Juana Anguiano and defenders Becca Schmidt and Monika Pszczola have played together since they were freshmen.
“They’ve been with me for all four years and this year is now the culmination of four years of hard work and experience,” Tigers coach Martin Blake said.
On the practice squad and on the field, the trio communicates with each other constantly. After four years of playing together, they’ve developed shorthand communication through hand signals and verbal cues.
During last week’s game against Glenbard South, Schmidt worked the back line and set up plays for the forwards. Pszczola acted as a conduit between the front and back, directing her teammates and keeping the Glenbard South offense under control. Anguiano, the most vocal of the group, kept pushing the Tigers to attack and relayed Schmidt and Pszczola’s signals to the forwards.
“We play well off of each other,” Pszczola said. “We can anticipate what the other is thinking and we communicate well so it makes things a lot easier.”
Those traits are coming in handy while leading a young Tigers team that reached the sectional round a year ago. While the current Tigers are less experienced, the three seniors see the situation as a challenge and are setting the bar high while being encouraging at the same time.
“If someone makes a mistake during a game, we try and pick our teammate up and not let it get them down,” said Schmidt. “Everyone makes mistakes. And in practice we’re always trying to push our teammates and get everyone to work together as a team, communicating and getting better.”
Anguiano said she is seeing improvement.
“We did lose a lot of starters last year and we’ve got a lot of new people coming in and starting so we’re learning to come together as a team and learn how to work together,” she said. “It’s gotten a lot better since the start of the season and it will continue to.”
Schmidt has committed to play soccer at Monmouth while Pszczola and Anguiano are undecided. They are determined to leave the soccer program in better shape than when they found it for their teammates.
“I think we’ll be one of the top teams in the conference and I think if we improve our off-ball communication and a few other things I think we could go really deep into the tournament like last year,” Anguiano said.
