Regrouping after a 1-0 loss in Vancouver in their first-ever game, in the first-ever season for the club, the Calgary Wild FC is preparing to take their first victory in a matchup against Halifax this weekend.
Wild FC head coach Lydia Bedford said the team is heading into that matchup with a slight disadvantage in that it will be Halifax’s first game of the season, and in turn, they will have seen what the Wild FC can do on the pitch already.
“The advantage firmly sits in their court with 90 minutes of our footage versus Vancouver to be able to peruse this week. But for us, obviously, the game last week brought us a lot of learnings and the way we prepared ourselves through preseason,” Bedford said.
“For me, that’s just about now trying to work out quickly in the game on Saturday, how we can adapt to what they’re doing, and make sure that we stick to our principles as part of that.”
She said that was a similar situation to the game with Vancouver, but with the new advantage of having the team pass the pre-season jitters.
Sarah Griffith, Wild FC forward, said that everyone in the league is in the same boat in these early games.
“We’ve never played each other. We’ve never seen each other play. When you go into a game not knowing your opponents, it’s definitely a little different. But we tried to focus on what we can do and what we can show,” she said.
“This is one game we want to show our best, but it’s a long season.”
Coming out of Vancouver’s game, Bedford said that she pushed the team to physically and mentally prepare over the weekend with a little friendly competition.
“It was the Easter weekend, so we had a bit of fun with an Easter egg tournament at one point. When you face a defeat, it’s as a group how quickly you can pick yourself up and go again. For us, we felt like we were really close on Wednesday night, so that didn’t necessarily need a lot of picking up, but the focus was really specific over those days to try and put us in the best position to come to Halifax,” she said.
Bedford said building those in-team connections has also been a really important way to bring the team together.
“I feel quite privileged that we have that amount of depth in our squad right now. So, I’m excited to see them tight to the pitch again this weekend.”
The Wild FC take on the Halifax Tides on April 26 at 3 p.m. The match can be viewed on TSN and ESPN+.
