The usual roundup of pictures taken over the last few weeks. This time they are themed on two topics.
Kevin brought back some swag from Germany for the boys; there was a lot of chocolate (there are still copious amounts of that in the house!) and some German soccer gear. Matthew is styling in the shirt, the sunglasses, and a world cup hat (it’s actually the colors of South Africa) while Holly looks on. Christopher has a shirt, a scarf, and the dreaded vuvuzela.
This is Christopher competing in the passing drill on the last day of the On Goal soccer camp last weekend. He did ok in the drill but certainly not good enough to win. For the second year Christopher was pretty clearly the best player on his team and that again made for a quick exit for the Brazilian Barracudas when the knock-out stage of the competition began. Unlike last year, Christopher did end up scoring more than a few goals this year. Kevin and I watched his first game on Saturday morning and they got blasted, 4-0. Kevin went over (with his vuvuzela) to watch Matthew’s game after that and missed Christopher’s goal in the 2nd game…..Cpher was not happy, he was looking forward to the melodious(?) sound of the vuvuzela serenading his goal.
But, in the first game of the knock-out stage (against the team that had beaten them 4-0 earlier) his team played tough and with a few minutes left in the game, Christopher scored and Kevin was able to loudly announce to the camp that his brother had scored. The team went on to lose in penalty kicks; I think it’s quite an accomplishment for that group to even get that far.
Matthew was in the dribbling drill; we’re confused on how he ended up here as opposed to shooting (his team was forced into penalty kicks and he was one of the shooters…he absolutely blasted it by the goalie and they ended up winning to move on) or goalie wars.
But, he did really well here. The pictures above show his first heat; he’s lined up next to his buddy Greg at the start, they sprint out, grab the ball at the orange cones, dribble to the yellow (and have to do a Maradona-spin between the two), stop the ball, and continue down the course and come back. In this heat, he finished first by about 2/3 of the course; in the final, he stumbled a little bit on the turnaround and came in 2nd or 3rd overall.
Matthew’s team was more solid, his buddy Greg is really good and they had an assortment of decent players as well. I tried to get to the camp early to watch the boys scrimmage and invariably, Matthew was being Matthew, scoring goals (and I think he scored the majority of them for his team). Unlike last year, when his team won the world cup, they were eliminated in extra time this year (…for a church camp, you have to wonder about sportsmanship. Matthew’s coach did a great job rotating players in and out, in that final game, Matthew started the game on the bench and finished the game on the bench. The other team had some really good players that I’ve coached and there were a few that didn’t leave the field at all, my co-coach from last years team had his son on that other team and afterwards came up and said ‘I can’t believe they took Matthew out!”)
