By STEPHEN GLOVER

For the Call

Life as a coach can be downright stressful.

Mark Giesing, head coach of the Lindbergh High School girls’ soccer team, has had more to worry about than just wins and losses the past couple of weeks.

His wife Susan, who was seven months pregnant, was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery to remove her appendix and deliver their son, Nicholas Kyle in the process.

As of the moment, it appears that Mom and son are in good health, which should give the head coach the opportunity to grab the reins of a team that’s struggling offensively.

“I think that we’ve been pleased with how our team’s played defensively,” Giesing told the Call. “Right now, someone’s going to have to put the ball in the goal with some strength for us. Somebody’s going to really have to step it up.”

The Flyers (3-10, 0-2 Suburban West) have struggled offensively throughout the season as they’ve averaged just 0.76 goals a game this season while allowing just 1.30 goals a game. Of the Flyers 10 losses in 2003, seven of them have been by one goal.

Senior Clarie Ward, who traditionally was known as being the Flyers goalkeeper, was moved near the beginning of the season to the midfielder position to give Lindbergh some scoring punch. Yet her experience in the net is what drew Giesing to the decision of putting her back in goal just a couple of weeks ago.

“Claire is a very good goalie,” Giesing said. “She’s done just an outstanding job back there for us.”

Despite the personnel moves, the Flyers continue to struggle as they lost in the first round of the 14th annual Catholic Youth Council Tournament in a 1-0 setback to Pacific on Tuesday evening of last week. Lindbergh did rebound from their loss with a exciting win over Rosati Kain in sudden death penalty kicks in which sophomore midfielder Amy Hake scored the game winning goal. The Flyers were then eliminated from the tournament on Friday evening as suffered a 1-0 loss to Althoff.

“We’ve experimented with every kind of lineup there is,” Giesing said. We clearly are not having any success in a ball-control type of play. We ended up moving to a 4-3-3 formation to put more forwards up top.”

Lindbergh will look to bounce back from their losses last week as they host Parkway West in an important Suburban West Conference matchup. If the Flyers were to manage a win over the Longhorns, it would pull them out of the basement in the conference standings.

“Parkway West is a great team,” Giesing said. “They’re a nice young developing team that has a great offense and defense. It’s a big Suburban West game for us and we want to hold our own in conference play.”

The Parkway West game is scheduled for a 6 p.m. start.