It might have just been a friendly match, but last week's 46-0 loss to Oregon State gave Western Washington's women's team some much-needed insights into the holes in their gameplay, and those are lessons they want to take into this weekend's clash with Western Oregon.

“We have a lot of new players this quarter, so we have been really focusing on the basics – getting our scrums down and how to safely construct line-outs,” WWU scrumhalf Kayla Adderley said. “We researched OSU a few times before the match and did not see any player in particular that we were worried about, but once we got on the field, we saw the their number one was going to be a little bit of a concern."

WWU has an issue this season staying flat on defense and coming up as a team. Their staggered line made it easy for teams to take advantage of gaps and gain extra meters that could have been prevented.

“Our coach wanted us to be smiling, have fun, and not take it too seriously. She did not want us to get frustrated or upset but instead wanted us to play our hearts out while enjoying it. She didn’t want us to beat ourselves up about mistakes and the score,” Adderley said.

WWU’s defensive line lacked the gap coverage they’d been practicing during the second half. As the women grew more tired, OSU was able to take advantage of more open gaps and score quickly. The confidence as a defense faded and WWU began to suck in to cover tackles that weren’t positive. The bunching made it easy for OSU to use their speed on the outside. The lack of communication and energy caused even more trouble at the breakdown and OSU quickly turned over ball due to slow WWU support.

Outside center Megan Stark almost put five points up for WWU, but dove for the try too soon due to her uncertainty of the location of the tryline. However, WWU wasn’t quick enough to support and OSU regained possession.

“Individually, everyone had a pretty solid game and did really well playing in their assigned positions. But as a team, we weren’t quite as strong as we should have been,” Adderley said.

WWU will kick off tomorrow at 11am at Harrington Field against Western Oregon University with an eye toward an improved performance.