Young NDCL shows promise in the attack

All it took Sept. 8 as Notre Dame-Cathedral Latin welcomed Mentor was one attacking sequence to show how good the present and future looks in Munson Township.

The Lions were locked in a 2-1 match in the second half with the Cardinals when Elena Brkic had possession in midfield.

Without hesitating, Brkic served a picture-perfect diagonal ball on the ground toward space wide right for Erica Leinweber. Leinweber latched on, delivered the finish and NDCL had its third goal en route to a 3-2 win.

“That,” Lions coach Matt Tainer said, “was a fantastic ball by Elena. She knew exactly what she wanted to do with it.”

If you’re on the opposite touchline, that’s exactly what NDCL wants to do – send a clear message: Good luck with that for the foreseeable future.

The scary part among many, as the Lions were 6-1 after a 5-2 win Sept. 15 over visiting Madison, is how young the side still is. The aforementioned Brkic and Leinweber are sophomores, and Tainer’s starting 11 against the Cardinals featured no seniors and five sophomores.

Tainer’s predecessor Steve Sivik, who is now the women’s coach at Lakeland, played his ninthgraders right away last fall as the side went 9-8-1 and advanced to a district semifinal. The benefits of that match experience were evident in 2017 and are even more so today.

“It’s great,” Tainer said. “Most of our starters are sophomores and juniors, so it’s great to have them for a couple years and get my style and how we want to play into it and ingrained. It’s starting to show. Steve did a great job and left me with a talented side to kind of take on and put my stamp on it.

“The girls are doing a phenomenal job, and I’m so excited. I’m lucky to have this group that I have. It’s full of talent and full of hard-working individuals that as a team, no matter what, is going to be hard to beat.”

Especially when they have the confidence to attack as they did on Leinweber’s aforementioned goal with Brkic’s first-class through ball.

Typically, playing to space instead of playing to feet is frowned upon unless

it’s used well and sparingly. Knowing an attacking run will be made, and the kind of pace with service it requires to pick it out, takes a lot of work on the training ground.

“Erica knew exactly where I was going to play it and when I was going to play it,” Brkic said.

“Once you start to work with your players. and you guys really bond together, then you’ll know when she is going to run, how she’s going to run. You’ll know how fast she is and all that stuff. With our players, we’re all starting to connect and get together.”

The lone blemish for the Lions thus far was notable, a 7-0 rout by Walsh Jesuit. But the rest has been pretty solid. NDCL has scored 23 goals in its six wins and recorded four clean sheets. The tactical style is frenetic and fun to watch, with Leinweber and Marina Hess wide up top and Lauren Thomas also showing the makings of being a clinical finisher.

Junior playmaking midfielder Frankie Forte will be missed in the side after suffering a knee injury. But the glimpses in the last couple years of what NDCL could be have been intriguing and will continue to be, especially in what could be a wideopen Division I area district mix in 2018.

One attacking sequence was enough to make that clear, but so is the form the Lions are currently enjoying.

“I think (the young base) is very beneficial,” Leinweber said. “Each year, some of us still do club and all that stuff. It helps us get even better.

“I think as (other D-I sides) get better, we’re still getting even more better. We’re still competing very well.”

Brkic

Leinweber