Lauren Milliet on her surging Racing Lou squad's push for the playoffs

What's up, everybody? It's Bretzky, and America is turning 250. And I can't think of a better way to celebrate that than playing on an American-owned social casino, SpinQuest.com. With all of your favorite games, live craps, bubble craps, live blackjack, there's no better place to play for free and win real cash prizes. SpinQuest.com. SpendQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpenQuest.com for more details. In the studio with me is a very talented racing Louisville player. Lauren Javier Milei, it's good to see you in person. I've seen you on the field on the pitch on the field. And you've been with us since the beginning of the franchise? Yeah, I'm an OG lady. Been here for a while. How many others on the squad have been here the whole time? Aaron, has she been here? It's just me now. Yep. Oh, does this make you, do they give you some name like that? Yeah, I just have been here for the longest. It's kind of. It's fun to have seen how everything's grown and all the different players you've met. And, yeah, it's been nice to kind of see Louisville evolve too. Yeah. Well, it is. There's no doubt about it. Jonathan, Lentner's also in the studio with me from Team. Jonathan, I have seen some news stories where people say, hey, the racing Louisville, I don't know. Are we on shaky ground in terms of holding on to this franchise? No, I think we just got to find a way to get people to show up and support it. You know, I see all the time, right? Louisville needs pro sports or Louisville needs top tier pro sports. And, you know. we're here reminding you that our city has that. And I think if you want to keep getting those sort of opportunities here, you have to show up for what is here and support it. And I look at Lauren and what the team has done here going into Saturday. They've won three or four games to claw right back into playoff contention. Great, great group of women on our team that represent the city well. And just would love to see the stands full because I think that makes that whole conversation disappear, right? No doubt. We'll talk about some of the. perks, the premiums that are coming with Saturdays 6.30 p.m. clash. Lauren, let's talk about how obviously it was a rough ride early on the season. We didn't quite know what was happening. And now tell me about the evolution of the team to this point where you're winning these matches. Yeah, it's just, I think it's been nice. We had a little bit of a reset, a bit of a formation change, which has been really nice. But yeah, I think we kind of. clawed a little bit of our identity back. I think we're a team that really values like out of possession. So high pressing, lots of energy. And I think maybe for a little bit of that, we were kind of falling off the train. And I think we've kind of full steam ahead corrected. We're on track. And I think that that's made a huge difference for us. Obviously, we're scoring some really fun, good goals too, which I think has been honestly electric. Obviously when you're scoring, it helps. It helps winning. You got to put goals in the back of the net. But yeah, I think it's.

been exciting. There's a lot of belief amongst the girls and yeah, it should be good for momentum. How has Coach Bev's messaging changed from, obviously, you know, you lost a bunch of matches and then all of a sudden it starts happening. What goes on in the change and the way that we're being communicated with? Yeah, no, totally. I think a lot of what we focus on is just game by game. So I think for us, obviously, it's just, hey, how can we focus? game by game to just keep building momentum. I think if you look too far in the future, it can be quite daunting, right? Especially when you're in periods that you're not doing well. So for us, it's just tackling it one by one and then kind of using them brick by brick of like, hey, what did we do well? What brick can we stock here? What brick can we like maybe boost up a little bit, put a little bit more glue. I don't know. Brick analogy. I'm not a brick. I'm not a brick lady. So sorry, not a bricklayer. But, you know, you get my gist. But yeah, so I think just that type of message. Okay, the new nickname is Mason. Now we're going on. Oh, brother. She invented another one for herself. But you could feel like things were switching. What was a West Coast win? What was it that made everybody go back to the bus and say, okay, now we're on the right page? Yeah, I think, again, it's just energy. I think obviously we had a bit of a formation change. I think it gave us a bit of a new... new life, a new leaf to turn over. And I think in general, once you kind of have, you put together those performances, you just start building on momentum and just thought process, right? Like, okay, we know we can handle really tough crowds. L.A. is huge crowd. It's really tough to play in. Okay, we just got a win here. We just build on that. So I think for us, it's just knowing and the belief is now starting to kind of trickle through that track for us. When you're in L.A. Is the chirping noticeable? Do you pay any attention to what's being said? Do you be shouted at you, that sort of thing? Or can you just blank it? I think depends on like... If they say it in like a quiet moment, you can sometimes hear a little bit of commentary from fans, which sometimes it's hilarious. I'm sure Blumer would have some stories to tell because she's right up next to them. So she probably gets it more than you. She loves talking about it because Blumer and I have chatted about this multiple times. And she kind of is like feral for it a little bit. She said she loves it. Yeah. She's like one, I'll never forget one time. I told her her her hair looked really good in Orlando and then. all of the fans made fun of her and I'll never live it down because she was like, I'm right, like, what do you mean? So that was a tragedy. Love you so much, Bloom. That was horrible. She will never ask me about her hair again because I let her down. But yeah, I think sometimes, but most of the time, it's just really loud. So it's like very fun when the atmosphere is that loud because when you kind of score in front of an away crowd, it's like dead quiet. That's right. So you look around and you're like, was it off? Like, did I do something? And then you're like, oh, wait, no. So that is the coolest part of playing away.

those big stadiums is how you can silence a crowd. Yeah, suddenly it gets like church. Yeah, you're like, what? Yeah, party's over. Yeah, he's talking, see you later. Let's talk about this Boston Legacy Squad. And then I apologize for my Boston hat. I was just there to see the Red Sox baseball team. This was not a statement about you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, Boston's going to be a really good game. They're obviously a new franchise that came in this year. And they've got some really creative, fun players. I think it will be a really exciting game. And we're excited to play them for the first time, obviously, first meeting in history. So that'll be pretty cool. Okay. So the week goes with you watch film. obviously you know what their players are capable of whether what their tendencies are and how to defend them yeah so obviously you'll review so we reviewed today like we'll go in and we'll review our film from last game and then you'll go to your scout so yeah we have like a pretty in-depth they do a great job obviously our tech staff does all that work and they kind of show us patterns of like, okay, this is how they will play, this is how they're built. We do set pieces review, so kind of you're prepared in every way of like in session out of session. So we get to see all of that. And all of us, I think, are very visual. So it's nice to be able to see that and then apply it on field that day. It's all good. And then you have your real life too. So you get supportive. Kind of. Yeah, your husband's a good dude. I mean, he's supportive and that's how that goes. Yeah, totally. And so it's good that you have your support arm, but really the team collectively, you've learned to communicate with each other enough that everybody supports each other. And I've always heard that about this squad, is that you figure it out. I don't know if it's leadership or how it works, but everybody's for pulling for everybody else. Yeah, it's definitely a squad that we rely on everyone. So there's not one person that we don't need. And I think we've always kind of said that about racing, that it's a top to bottom club where. Even, you know, the cafeteria, our cafeteria workers, Jesse and the cafeteria, like, we need everyone with our grounds crew, like everyone working in the games. Like, we need all of us to make a championship winning squad. And, yeah, we've always kind of found a way to get through the hard stuff because if it's you versus your own team, then you're never, you're old, you've already lost, right? So for us, it's always us against the opponent rather than us against us. So we figured out together. Well, let's go smack Boston around Saturday night. Yep, I'm on it. Jonathan, are we at 6.30 Saturday? Yes, 630. And we're calling this down the stretch night. I saw that. What does that mean? It is kind of our play on obviously racing Louisville is named after our racing horse industry. Down the stretch they come and we're fighting to get a playoff spot. Exactly. Exactly. So I think we mentioned at the top the teams won three or four games. We're seven points out from a playoff spot. But I think four of the next five games are against teams that are eighth place or worse. And eighth place is that playoff cut line. So we're not only trying to gain points. We're trying to prevent those teams that are right in front of us.

from picking them up as well. So made the playoffs last year for the first time and looking to get back. And I think, you know, we've gone from a pretty dark place of saying, you know, what's going to happen in the rest of the season to just really breathing new life into it. So we're excited to see the community come out Saturday and, you know. Like Lauren's talking about away, you love that noise and everything. But when it's at your back and it's for you, it makes a huge difference. No doubt about that. It's like a Pez dispenser, too. You are trying to move up to get into that playoff spot. You got to knock some other people aside off to the curb. That's your job, Lauren. Come to the curve. Are there a t-shirt giveaway or something Saturday? Yeah, Bill Gates open at 5 o'clock. We know people probably be lined up down the street, but yeah, we've got a T-shirt giveaway to the first 2,000. Happy hour. We've got some fireworks before kickoff, so get in your seat, and then after the game we'll have select players. I want to say about 10 players, including Lauren, we'll be doing a meet and greet in our premium club room for about an hour. So we try to blow out the promotions once a year. This is when we circle on the calendar. Luckily, things have lined up on the field to make this a very big game for us. We're excited about it, Lauren. I'm excited. It should be really good time. Enjoy it all. We love the pub that comes out for various players on the squad. And so, you know, let's keep this mole rolling. On it. See you Saturday night, 6.30 at Lynn Family Stadium. Of course, Jonathan told you about all the details and the premiums in there, too. Start 630. Let's get out loud and proud. Pull for our racing Louisville squad on Saturday. Great to meet you, Lauren. Yeah, thanks so much for having me on. Appreciate it. Back in a view on News Radio at 40 WHS. Oh, I've had no luck lately. Wait, lady luck? Brett Ski, I got you. I've had so much luck on SpinQuest.com. They have all of my favorite games, slot games, live blackjack craps, and bubble craps. You can even get a $30 coin pack for just $10 bucks. $10 for 30. I'm headed over to SpinQuest.com right now. SpinQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit spendquest.com for more details.