After returning home from the Sun City Invitational at Univeristy of Texas El Paso with a record of 2-3-1, the Sacramento State women’s soccer team gets back to game action at home on Friday against Cal State Northridge,

Assistant coach Randy Dedini said the 11 day layoff has its good and bad parts. “The advantages are that we get to rest our banged-up players and get the team’s legs back,” Dedini said. “The disadvantage is you can lose focus during such a long layoff.”

Head coach Katie Poynter said there is no comparison to game action, but she realizes the importance of rest for some of the team’s walking wounded. One of these wounded is freshman goalie Jenny Lawrence, who has a broken left middle finger.

“Normally there are about four people in the training room, but right now we have about 10,” Lawrence said. “It’s good to have some time to heal up.”

Northridge (5-1) just got back from winning the Northern Arizona High Altitude Tournament in Flagstaff, Arizona by beating St. Bonaventure by the score of 3-1 and Loyola-Chicago by the score of 7-1. Northridge has outscored its opponents 20-5 so far this year. Poynter is well aware of the abilities of Northridge, but she also said, “We can play with them if we play our game and come out strong.”

On Sunday the Hornets play host to San Jose State, whose record stands at 0-7-1 on the season.

Sac State will wrap up their three-game home stand Tuesday against Idaho. The Vandals of Idaho are 2-4 on the season so far while being outscored by their opponents 11-5.

“We’ve spent a lot of time on shooting drills recently because we have had a lot of scoring chances in recent games but we haven’t converted them,” Poynter said. “We know that if we are going to win games we have to convert scoring chances when we get them.”

The game against Northridge will start at 3 p.m.

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Benn Hodapp can be reached at [email protected]