This is tryout weekend here in Michigan; all of the clubs have tryouts scheduled this weekend and throughout the week.
Matthew: The plan was to have Matthew try out for the local premier club because, quite simply, Matthew needs better technical training than a civil engineer who stopped playing soccer on a team at age 6 can provide. We knew this would present a huge challenge logistically because we want Matthew to continue with Christopher and me one more year but had discussed it and resolved to do it.
One person wasn’t really into this plan at first though. And Matthew had a fit about not doing something to rival Christopher’s at his very best. Finally finally got him out the door and, grudgingly, on the way to tryouts, all the while he’s muttering “I’ll go to the tryout, I won’t be on the team!” and not really giving us any reason for this.
This tryout was for his age group, U9 (under age 9 and under as of August 1, 2010)…he was out there with a bunch of 7 and 8 year olds. And for the 1st half of the tryout he did his level best to show Dad that you can drag me to the tryout, but you can’t make me do it and half-assed it through the drills. Part of this was the drills; they were simple basic simple and he wasn’t interested in that, part of it was pure defiance.
His competitive nature started peeking through as they went to 1 on 1 and 2 on 2 drills and by the end of the tryout he was his usual self. With these tryouts, they offer some spots right after the tryout and then ask others to come back; they offered Matthew a spot on the team along with a few others (there were 15 players total I think). The coach is talking to me and Matthew and asks if we accept and I told him, well, I don’t know, Matthew was insistent that he didn’t want to be on the team….Matthew, what do you think? Of course, not surprisingly, Matthew’s done a complete 180 and now wants to be on the team a great deal. Tell the coach we still need to talk it over to make sure Matthew’s head is where it needs to be and we’ll let him know in 24 hours.
So, go back on Sunday to have Matthew try out for U10’s (one year up, what he’s been doing all year last year). Since he’s been playing up we wanted to make sure that he shouldn’t be playing up here as well. This tryout went almost immediately into scrimmages and that makes Matthew happy….thought he did really well in the first of the two, constantly carried the ball forward and had some nice passing and defense and scored a goal to finish things off. During the 2nd scrimmage he kind of hung around Christopher more on defense and did fine there, but, having his brother nearby was a distraction….
Suzanne and I, after talking with the coaches, think that while he could play U10, it’s probably best that he play U9 there and U10 with us.
Christopher: While Christopher will look good the moment he walks through the door to the football and basketball tryouts, soccer is a different matter for the big guy….the tryouts are always biased towards the fast kids. He, like Matthew, will be on the U10 team that I will coach. This will definitely be my last year coaching and may be Christopher’s last year of soccer (at this level) as well….
