Miye Kodama’s the first to admit that she’s not the consummate “easiest player to play with.”
“I’m super specific in what I want,” the Louisville girls soccer forward said Monday, following the Royals’ 3-1 win over Marlborough in which Kodama scored two goals. “I want a ball that I can run onto.”
Kodama fortunately has a teammate in midfielder Kylie Morris who is privy to her picky preferences. Morris commands the center of the field for the Royals. Directly aligned with Kodama, feeding her passes that offer the space to turn, take a dribble or two, and slot it in the net.
“We kind of read each other’s minds,” Morris said.
On Monday, that synchronicity sprung to life when Morris tossed a throw-in to Kodama in stride before she volleyed it into the top corner.
It’s a steady connection like that — one that’s been built over seven years of sharing the soccer field — that Louisville head coach Ariana Martinez is seeking throughout her roster as the Royals embark on a CIF Southern Section playoff run.
Martinez and the Royals (15-3 overall, 7-0 in Angelus League) can go unbeaten in league play with a win over Notre Dame Academy on Wednesday. They had held clean sheets — a stat Martinez harped on as a measuring stick for the playoffs — in each game since they last faced Marlborough on Jan. 10. With their win Monday, the Royals clinched their first league championship since 1991 when they split it with Alemany.
For Martinez, boxes have certainly been checked, but to turn a successful regular season into a lengthy postseason run, she believes her team needs to improve its cohesion and develop chemistry similar to what Kodama and Morris enjoy.
During the offseason before her second campaign as the Royals’ head coach, Martinez felt she had a greater chance to learn about her players and strengthen personal connections off the field, rather than last year when she was acclimating to the gig.
“I learned, in the offseason, a…
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