Courtesy: Marianas Variety


Futsal shifts from pool play to semi-finals

By Jude Lizama

THE 2007 Guam Football Association Women’s Futsal League has gone through both regular season and pool play action at the Guam Sports Complex in Harmon. Soon to come will be the semi-final match ups featuring the league’s top two teams from Pools A and B to decide which teams will face off in either the championship game or third place consolation game.

Both pools were set up by grouping odd and even numbers in regards to regular season ranking. Pool A had the first, third, fifth and seventh ranked teams. Pool B consisted of the second, fourth, sixth and eighth ranked teams in the league. League coordinator Cheri Stewart believed the structure would result in evenly matched games that would, in turn, create more exciting matches.

With the new format this season, the regular season provided strategic opportunity of how teams would fall within the pools for the playoffs. The round robin pool play created an opportunity to teams that were normally eliminated in the first round of playoffs in the previous format, providing a ‘second chance’ with the point system,” explained Stewart.


“However, I am against a team’s manipulation or throwing the game just so that there’s better positioning or easier route to get to the finals. I would prefer that the best team fight all the way to clearly display they are the better team,” she added.


At the end of the regular season the Orange Crushers, Hyundai, Paintco Strykers and Pacificare Tigers rounded off the top four teams. However, with the round robin structure, an unlikely situation occurred as the fifth ranked Guam Shipyard made it into one of the two semi-finals matches instead of the third seeded Paintco Strykers. Regrettably, the Strykers failed to put themselves in a position to defend their crown from a year ago.


Stewart talked about the strengths of the fifth ranked Guam Shipyard. “Shipyard has a pool of talented players and when they find the rhythm that will get them to score, there’s not much that can stop them. They have a tendency of tweaking their mistakes until they hit perfection,” stated Stewart.


The GFA Women’s Futsal League will feature a new team next season. “Next season we’re adding a new team which will be the Women’s Masters. They are being put together in preparation for the 2009 World Masters Game in Sydney, which will create slot openings on various teams for newcomers to join,” said Stewart.
Stewart says that overall the Futsal league is growing in talent. “All of the teams have definitely raised the competitive bar among each other. Competition across the board is getting tougher,” she said.
The 2007 Guam Football Association Women’s Futsal semi-finals will take place on Sunday, November 11. Action will begin promptly at 2:00 p.m.



Posted by Luca Ranocchiari --> luca.ranocchiari@futsalplanet.com