Lights FC Head Coach Dennis Sanchez
On getting his side back to winning ways…
“Yeah, obviously happy for the guys. Look, it’s never easy to win. My message to them over the last four or five games is to just continue to trust the process and put ourselves in positions to be successful. If you look at where our group’s at, the next step in our evolution is learning how to win together. We’ve had good performances throughout the year and good moments in games; we’ve shown we can compete with some of the best teams in the league, but now it’s time to start turning these performances into wins. Credit to Miami, they scored on us first, but I really like the response from our guys, and I felt like we deserved three points tonight.”
On the team’s mentality when down a goal…
“Just to keep going. There’s obviously some things we talked about at halftime about how we can be cleaner in arriving, be better in our high press, and I think the guys did that. But like we’ve said, goals change games and we got really our first [penalty kick] all year and it comes at a timely time. But I’m happy for them and just encourage the guys to keep going and keep patient. The goals are going to come.
On what he enjoyed most from his team’s performance…
“It’s a very collective performance. What I mean by that is, we’re without a few players, we’ve had injuries, international duty, and we’ve never let that be an excuse for our guys. It’s always been next man up and credit to Khori [Bennett] who took his opportunity tonight and scored a couple of goals to help the team. Just collectively overall, guys stepping in and continuing to play our way, and having belief in the process.”
On what finding momentum and a groove from here looks like…
“Scoring more goals than our opponent. We’ve been better defensively, and we know we have the capability of scoring more goals, so again it’s just putting in these complete performances, continuing to respect our opponent but at the same time play our way. Like I said, wins change seasons and goals change games – we just need to keep moving forward and build off this momentum.”
