SPOKANE, Wash. – Second-year captain Luis Gil has been through every valley and peak with the Spokane Velocity, and now he’s helped lead them to first place in the USL League One for the first time.
“You gotta take care of business,” Gil said. “I just hope we find the consistency throughout the season. Last year, we had a lot of ups and downs, but this year, we’ve kinda find our footing a little bit early on, and hopefully we can keep it going.”
That footing was well-found on Sunday against Westchester SC, where a deficit five minutes into the match vanished over a tremendous second half, resulting to a 3-1 Spokane win and 14 points to summit the standings with a won tiebreaker over FC Naples.
“We want it more,” Gil said. “We didn’t want to just score two, because Carlos had a great save with the penalty, which kept us in the game, but we kept being hungry and kept wanting more. I feel like we just gotta keep having that same attitude.”
“They flip it around and the quality stepped to another level that we didn’t have in the first half, and once we started to get that rhythm, we started to get ourselves into a position to go and attack a little bit more, create better chances, and that’s when the goals started to flow,” head coach Leigh Veidman said.
Veidman added despite losing almost half of last season’s finalist team, their strong leadership carried over.
“So that in itself enables the group, that 60%, to really dial in the environment that we want here with the new guys that have come in, so of course, that is largely my job, so we tackle that together, and those guys know what we want and what the expectations are day-to-day,” Veidman said. “They’ve been fantastic setting the tone in the locker room and in training on what those expectations are.”
So now Luis and his deep company prep for the long haul of the summer, only one home match over the next month.
“If we’re ever in a situation where we need guys to come in and replace a player,” Gil said. “We’re ready and we won’t feel like we’ve taken a step back, and I feel like it’s going to keep driving us.”
Spokane next travels over 2,500 miles to South Georgia Tormenta SC to play Saturday at 4:30 p.m.
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