Slick on the Pitch, Rams Refuse to Slide

In the middle of the night, her players can hear her words: Get better each time out.

To do so requires taking the lessons of the past and applying them forward. When Thursday's match with UTSA was delayed by 55 minutes at Ram Field due to lightning, Colorado State was mentally prepared for what was to follow. While it was the bursts from the sky which halted play before it began, it was the heavy rain which fell for about 30 minutes that turned the pitch into a bit of a pond in places.

Go back a match prior, on Sunday in Florida, when Keeley Hagen's group played on a wet field, doing so a bit timidly for the first 45 minutes. She said once they figured out they could navigate the field just fine, her squad played with more fire, more confidence.

Which is how her group came out against the Roadrunners, the biggest strike of the night coming in just the second minute as Olivia Fout produced her fourth goal in as many games, the only tally in a 1-0 victory to extend the program's best start to a 4-0 mark.

Fout is the only Ram to have scored in three consecutive games, and entering the match, she had done it twice. Now it's four in a row, giving her 18 in her career, one off the program record set by Caeley Lordemann.

In the past two games, her markers have been all the Rams have put on the board, making the fact they have strung together three consecutive clean sheets all the more important. They've done so with a new goalie protecting the cage, and a rebuilt back line in front of her.

And it all come together in about three weeks.

"I don't want to say I'm surprised because I'm not at all. We put in so much work," senior defender Kate Dunne said. "I think we've been together 20 something days and we've put in so much work, so I don't want that to obviously go unstated, but I'm just impressed with how flexible everyone's been, how willing to take constructive criticism.

"People are really just getting better and better every game. Like, Piper (Carlson), just from where she started to even now, I feel super confident with her out here and I'm really excited for us to just keep going upwards."

Dunne is the veteran of the group, the only returning starter. Kacie Laurie, after starting nine matches a year ago, has filled one of the spots, with Avery Boulom and true freshman Carlson taking the other two spots. Behind them is transfer Gray Willson, who has played every minute in net this season and has produced some pretty substantial saves in the opening run.

Communication is key in the back end and learning to work with each other and understand what they are saying to each other is just as important as their physical skills. Willson has made 19 stops this season, six coming against UTSA.

"I've just got to give credit to my backline for these last three games we've had for clean sheets. Kate Dunn, being a senior, is an excellent leader," Willson said. "Piper, being a freshman, I think she's really come in and stepped up big time, and I think she's been really receptive to all of the information that we've been giving her, and she's come up huge. And KK and AB as well, I have a lot of confidence in my backline, and they make my job much easier, so all credit goes to them.

"I would say it definitely came together really quickly. I think one thing that we're really coached on from Keeley is control your controllables, and communication with the controllables. I think that's been key in practice, on and off the field, just talking with each other, because at the end of the day, that's going to make our jobs easier as a backline to talk."

Hagen is impressed with the way the group has come together in the early going, but just as important has been the teamwide mentality. The Rams have played with a short bench at the start, still waiting to get some players back to full health. Thursday, the team only used three subs.

Chalk that up to the culture she has built, as well as the team's dedication to stick to the process. Live and learn doesn't work if it's not applied.

The Rams definitely did in their fourth victory.

"We had a really good week of training and kind of getting back to our principles. And the response that our team had on Sunday, how they coached themselves at halftime, how we kind of gutted that one out, that is what you're going to need to do on Sundays," Hagen said. "When we came in for this game, UTSA is a good team. It's like, when you're playing in these conditions, definitely Sunday helped us for sure. We were just able to build off of that and kind of layer in from last Sunday to tonight. That experience that happened so quickly, they were able to remember that.

"Then they stuck to the game plan. I think that's what I'm really proud of too, is we talked about the process of, hey, this is who we are, this is what we're doing. In these conditions, you have to make an adjustment, and they did that. And I'm just really proud of their attention to detail today was really, really good."

While the fans were ushered back to their cars to wait out the weather, the team went into their locker room. Delays are not ideal for athletes who are tuned up to play when scheduled, but Dunne said the team came out confident.

One they were on their pitch. Two, they felt at ease in the slop.

"This is our home, too. We're used to this field," she said. "We've been training on this field a little bit wet all week from the rain, but I think we walked into that lightning delay like, hey, we did this last week. We're pros at this, and we're going to learn, and how we come out after the lightning delay, we're going to be even better, and I think we were."

Fout wasted no time to give the Rams the lead, and while she made a great play with the ball to beat a defender, she was the first to credit the creator of it all, Michaela McGowan.

The transfer from Denver has been transformative for the Rams attack, her ability to control the ball at high speed and fly by defenders producing chances for herself and others. Her feed from just inside midfield split the defense, and Fout slid by a defender to her right, pushing the ball to the left of the net past the goalie.

The assist was the third of the season for McGowan.

"She's just really special," Hagen said of McGowan. "I always say in recruiting, if you don't have speed, you're chasing it. And she got it right in front of her a bunch. She can go inside, she can go outside. I mean, when you think about our wide forwards, we've got a lot of speed, but it's a handful for her opponents. And we have a dynamic front three, and then you add in Mia Casey in there, and she's getting started.

"I'm really excited about our attacking arsenal on top of how our team defending is coming together."

Two minutes, one goal. The other 88 minutes, make it stick. With a slick ball, Willson went with a punch approach, particularly early in the contest.

"I would say I'm coached that when it's wet, you're obviously not going to be able to hold things as cleanly, especially when your gloves are soaking. And so, it's definitely if you're really confident you can hold the ball, go for it, because obviously we don't want to parry it. But in games like this, when you're kind of playing in the swamp, obviously to parry it as wide as possible is going to be the go-to."

It may not be the cleanest approach, but on a slick field, the Rams came away as tidy as one could hope.

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Olivia Fout

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