The boys schedule, conveniently, falls into 1 home and 1 away game versus four other teams. Thursday we squared off against the last team in our group we hadn’t played, St. Johns. This team had played in the tournament we played in August, and lost to the team we lost to by the same amount, 6-0, and had crushed a team we had problems scoring against, so, I figured we were in for a tough time.
Surprisingly, the boys finally started to implement the stuff we had been working on in practice, and, with one very large exception, we controlled most of the game and won 5-3. That one exception was the team’s continued failure to not mark the other boys coming into the middle for centering passes; we’ll be working hard on that in practice this coming week.
Christopher got a breath of fresh air on offense late in the first half and was able to break through for a goal; he was on the bench in the 2nd half and after watching some defensive breakdowns on our part asked to go back in on defense to ‘be the wall’. Played well, kind of deteriorated in technique towards the end and part of Tuesday’s practice will be inspired by a drill to improve Christopher’s (and other’s) defensive lapses.
Matthew had a solid game as well; when we were trying to survive the other team’s rally in the 2nd half he was all over the place…..constantly sprinting to the ball and challenging a player. His hard work bit us in the butt once; he had hurried back to guard a player in front of our goal and the other team centered the ball….right at Matthew, who couldn’t stop, and it bounced off of him into our goal! He came off the field right after that (we had already planned to sub him out) and dissolved in tears as he hit the sidelines….both coaches had to have a quick talk with him “those things happen” “you were working hard, no big deal”…etc. Thankfully, that own goal only made it 4-3 and we scored another goal late to make the final 5-3. Matthew also had a sweet give and go with another boy but again planted the ball right on goal…oh well.
