Ryan Lawrence Quotations

Luke and I played that way in college, and it worked great for our team. But this team needs a sweeper in the back. The 3-5-2 alignment gives us more depth in the back and more numbers in the midfield.

I don't know anything about the team last year. I just know what I've been told.

We thought Will broke his leg, but he has a deep bone bruise. Nelson has horrible shin splints and Luis has a nasty bruise. It's yellow and purple. We've joked around that it looks like some kind of disease, because it's spread over his entire leg.

I thought all the guys in the back played well. They did a good job with the changes we made back there.

It gives us more depth in the back. It gives us a head start when defending against the long ball, making it harder for people to get behind us. If the other team serves the long ball, then we're a little further back. We won't lose the foot race to the ball.

That was excellent character. All week long, I talked about how someone needs to step up and make a difference in the game.

We've made significant progress this year. Everyone has made progress as soccer players. It just bums me out that it's taken this long. But we know that the juniors will have the basic ideas down when they come back next season.

We'll probably go with a 4-4-2 configuration that emphasizes possession. We're not overly talented, and we don't have any superstars. We don't have that guy that would be on a poster. We'll rely on all 11 players to get organized and work hard for each other.

We're trying to implement our overall ideas and thoughts. We're trying to do that with high school kids that have been exposed to lots of different ideas already.

We had a real patchwork team. Mauro was hurt, so he had to play cautiously. Then Nelson ended up getting hurt.

We've got a couple of guys that can hit the ball.

We tell our kids all the time, that soccer is won and lost in the midfield.

That's what we've worked on in practice. We want the forwards and the midfielders to play together.

That's what we've been asking them to do, send those through balls. Tonight we were able to get on to them.

That's just poor defense. Our marks were loose in the back and the midfield, and we gave them too much time in space with the ball.

That's his role. He makes sure we keep our shape and people stay marked up.

There's a right time for the long ball and right time for the 10-yard pass. We're trying to get them to understand that. We're working on those kind of decisions every day in practice.

They were playing flat. Anytime they're playing flat, they don't have that depth, that last person to intercept things.

I'm trying to figure out what high school soccer is like.