Nicholls soccer team gets extra time to prepare for HCU after long road trip

The week’s break in competition couldn’t have come at a better time for the Nicholls soccer team.

After getting back from a road swing to south Texas, the Lady Colonels didn’t arrive back home from a 1 p.m. Sunday game at Corpus Christi until 3 a.m. Monday.

“We give them an extra day off, so they had off Monday Tuesday,” Nicholls coach Robert Podeyn said. “We will train Wednesday through Saturday and get ready for a game on Sunday. We will still end up having some time to prepare.

“It gives the chance for the players to kind of focus because it’s getting close to midterms at this point. Kids are kind of stressed out as it is, anyway. We’re giving them the extra day to kind and focus on that and reset a little bit.”

Nicholls (0-6 in the Southland Conference, 1-14 overall) is coming off losses of 3-0 to Incarnate word and 2-0 to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

“The Friday game, we panicked in the beginning,” Podeyn said of the loss to UIW. “The other team was playing a different formation, and the girls didn’t kind of know how to handle it, so we had a talk with them at halftime. The second half, we played so much better. We had so many more opportunities going forward and better position. If we had played that way for the entire game, it’s not a 3-nil game at that point. Maybe a 1-nil game.

“The second game on the Sunday, we made a defensive mistake that conceded the first goal. The second goal was a free kick. The time in between, I think we played our best soccer that we’ve played all season. We had good possession. We had chances going forward. We penetrated. We just don’t like to shoot right now. I don’t have player really that is hungry, wants to get the ball and shoot. It’s more like we get in there and kind of do our job, and we’re looking for someone else to stop up and score. We are lacking that instinct right now.”

Nicholls will host Houston Christian at 1 p.m. Sunday. HCU marks the first Southland opponent the Lady Colonels have faced twice this season. The Huskies won the first meeting 5-0.

“I think we are better prepared. When we played them the first time, we were still kind of transitioning, trying to figure things out. We started out in one formation, and it didn’t work, so we went back to our other formation, and it did work.

“We made a lot of mistakes, and the girls really hadn’t started to really start to accelerate and improve. Now that we have, Houston Christian is one of those teams that is just right above us. I think it’s a game where they are going to come in and over-estimate us.”

HCU (2-4 in the Southland, 4-8 overall entering the week) plays at Southeastern Louisiana before facing Nicholls on Sunday.

“This is the weekend where we get an extra break and they have the extra game,” Podeyn explained. “They will be playing at Southeastern, which will be an interesting game. That should be a battle, and then they come to us. They are preparing for Southeastern, not us. We’re preparing for Houston Christian. I think it’s an opportunity to take what we’ve been building with and improving each week and put it into play on Sunday.”

HCU has scored a total of 22 goals. Alexa Huerta paces the team with four goals while Katie Marker has three. Huerta scored two of her games in the first meeting with Nicholls but has not scored since.

“They don’t really have a specific go-to player, but they are looking to play possession. “It’s more score by committee,” Podeyn said. “It’s one of those things where if we play the way we played the second half – because they are going to play a similar formation as Incarnate Word – if we take that and clean it up, play a little quicker the way we did on Sunday, then we should have some very good possessions and chances.”