Youth Soccer Update

We are a few games into my daughter's first season with our start up soccer team and I think we are coming upon a crucial juncture. We are 0-2 at this point and if we don't have a good showing Saturday I'm afraid the girls are going to lose faith that they can do this. We've got our obstacles and I knew this was going to be a tough season a while back. Only two of the girls (one of them mine) has ever played before. On top of that we are one of only two new teams in our division. All of the other teams have been together at least a couple of years. This makes a monumental difference at this stage, and I think even more so with girls. They are having to learn about competition. Not just skills, not just soccer, but competition. This is a concept that I think a lot of little girls are shielded from. Me against you and I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that you lose. This isn't about us all having fun, because truthfully losing isn't fun. Our first game was against a really rude team that started smack talking and insulting our girls after they got up a couple of goals on us. This really upset our players. On top of that they were pulling hair, hitting, tripping and doing anything they could to fight for the ball. Whereas I don't condone any of their actions (in fact I complained to the commissioner). In the end I think it was a good thing for our team to face them in the first game. The girls realized that the other team wasn't out there to make friends. It was a good wake up call for all of them. We actually finished the game rather strongly and I think that if we faced them again that we would probably win. The second game we were short handed and had only one substitute. All of the girls had to play substantially longer than they were used to. I saw improvement on some things (positioning, aggressiveness, kick offs, throw ins). This team was better behaved than the last time, but was also better skilled. They beat us pretty soundly, but at points it was obvious that our girls were just exhausted. Once again it was good experience for the girls that were there. They learned that you have to push yourself, exhausted or not, until the game is done.
So game 3 is Saturday and I am excited. I honestly get really excited about all of them. We've had two strong practices where I'm seeing progress (spacing, passing, defending) and I hope this is the game where we turn our fortunes around. From what I understand this will be against the other team that is new, so it means that much more to me.