Griffins grow on the pitch during Reading Week trip to England
Jefferson Hagen / MacEwan Athletics
Beyond the cultural experience of spending Reading Week in England, the MacEwan Griffins women's soccer team improved on the pitch, too.
The Griffins returned to Canada last Thursday the day after drawing 1-1 with professional Women's Super League 2 squad Watford.
"I think us getting a result, they saw first-hand that if we're able to execute the game plan and get our tactics right that even though we're up against some steep competition we definitely can close that gap in terms of professional players against amateur players," said head coach Dean Cordeiro.
"We now get to take that experience of playing professional sides back into our league play," he added. "Now when we're up against the top team, they can go back into the vault a little bit and go 'yeah, this is a really good team we're up against, but remember when we played against Reading or Watford?'
"It will start to put things into perspective that this might be an obstacle but they can dig deep and understand what they've already experienced. This is just another match here locally."
Earlier in the week, the Griffins lost 6-0 to Reading FC and 3-1 to Bristol City, both WSL 1 squads.
"Reading FC – every single player on their team has featured for their national team side at some point, so they've all got international experience with their own country," said Cordeiro. "Bristol City just won promotion from WSL 2 to WSL 1, so now they play at the top flight and have many internationals as well.
"The Watford ladies are in WSL 2 are professional. A handful of them have international experience. One of their players, in particular, a U19 player (Rinsola Babajide) was out of this world. She led them in goals last year and just got called into camp with the England national team, so keeping her in check was tough."
So on the pitch, the Griffins were in tough, but if you want get better, there's nothing like it.
"As the week went on, we knew we were going to be in over our heads, but we were down there for a great opportunity and an experience," said Cordeiro. "Getting 23 players into every match is also a little bit tricky, but we made it work and our girls, absolutely … the Reading game was a bit of an eye-opener to play that calibre, but as the week went on, we started to play our game and we started to be somewhat successful.
"We started to see some of that belief come together. Thirty minutes into the Bristol City match we were already down 3-nil and then from that point on we started to play our game and our players stopped giving them so much respect and time and space to play. The rest of that match, we ended up scoring a goal, as well as not conceding.
"I think that really set us up for the Watford match. Although we went down 1-nil in the early moments, we hung in there and exchanged opportunities with them, got stronger as the game went on, and in the final minute scored off a scramble on a corner kick. Jamie Erickson was successful, so that was huge."
Jamie Erickson scored both of MacEwan's goals during the tour.
