Amsterdam – Pregame

Suzanne (who never goes to the blog) commented the other day; you haven’t blogged in almost two weeks.  For both of us, it’s been a very busy time at work….and that’s cut into my blogging time.

Future non-Amsterdam blog topics

• Holt 4v4 soccer tournament
• Annual physicals (with growth charts)
• Kevin’s English essay

We’re in Amsterdam as I type this; arrived this morning at 9 am local (that’s 3 am EDT).  More on today’s excursions later.  Let’s talk about getting the other eight occupants of the house where they needed to be, in order of difficulty.

Cats:  Sometimes we’ve had to leave Michigan with cats still outside; one time we collected them all and locked them away and forgot to release them before we left.  We have our approach perfected now; all cats trapped in basement by 9 am, all cats released into the house at 10 am as we left the premises on Wednesday.

Fric and Frac:  Their flight to Florida left at 7:30 am from Flint; that means a 5 am wake-up call and a 5:30 am departure on Tuesday morning.  Boys were up late late late Monday night, so, we figured we might have two grumpy kids BUT, they were pretty good that early.  Last time we went to Flint we were stuck at the ticketing counter for an hour; this time we breezed right through, got to the gate almost 45 minutes early.  They boarded the boys almost as soon as we got there, and I killed time doing work while waiting for the plane to leave (Delta wants the parent to stay until the plane takes off).

Kevin:  Went with us Wednesday morning after everything was done out to Blue Lake; this is old hat for him by now and it was pretty obvious he just wanted us to be gone.  Very different from the first time out here, or, even last year when he got a little teary-eyed as he boarded the bus for Germany.

Holly and Wiley:  These two are the whole reason we’re doing a pre-vacation post. 

I thought we had their arrangements down to a science too; get up, put some of their bedding blankets in a bag, put leashes on, get to car, go to the ‘camp’, about 15-minute drive.  Roll down the back window halfway and lock the windows so nothing strange happens.

So, we’re driving along, Kevin’s in the passenger seat, Wiley’s in the back with his head out the window, and Holly is being a little pest, and my hazy memory of the facts remembers this……Holly was whining and moved to the front and sat on Kevin’s lap, and Kevin and I discussed, and then did, roll down his window to see if Holly wanted to hang her head out that window (she didn’t).

To roll down the front passenger window, I have to unlock the windows, roll down the one window a little bit, and relock them.  And one of two things happened

a)  I didn’t relock the windows, and Wiley hit the window down button in the back at some point after the front window was down

or

b)  during that brief period while the windows were unlocked, Wiley hit the window down button in the back.

Less than a minute has gone by between Holly to the front and all of this happening, I look back, don’t see Wiley in the window, see that it’s all the way down now, and ask Kevin, “Where’s Wiley?”……hoping that he’s just gone and sat down behind me in the back seat.

Nope.  Jumped out the window.  We were doing between 30 and 40 on Grand River, the main east-west road through Okemos.

I can’t even describe the thoughts going through my head as we slam to a stop and turn around to see if we can find him.  Kevin says I used the word that rhymes with duck a lot.

Go all the way back (about a mile) and slowly start coming east on Grand River….no sign of him in he parking lots, nothing.  Next up is a field/vacant lot, no sign of him there.  Get past that to some more businesses and Kevin says “there he is!”….he’s with two people over near the local Chase bank branch we use….

Quickly pull around and pull up to the bank.  Wiley is lying down against the wall, and as I walk up I can see him trembling…the people there show me where he pee’d all over the sidewalk.  Apparently, after he jumped, he ran across the 4-lane road to the other side, ran back across to the side he was on when we found him, and the cars that he ran through must have given him the scare of his life (right after the scare of jumping out of a car going about 35 miles per hour!).

He looks to be unhurt; no scrapes, can stand on all legs.  I have to pick him up to get him back in the car (and he’s scrambling, scrambling(!) to get back in the car, and ask Kevin to move to the back to check him out as we continue our journey to doggie-camp.  Get there, get the leash on, and he hops out of the car, does his business, and looks like nothing happened. 

He did not go anywhere near the window for the last ten minutes of the drive.

Talk to the people there, ask them to watch him closely because if there’s something internally wrong, we won’t see that right away.  Call back after we drop Kevin and they report he’s doing just fine, he’s gone outside, he’s walked, he’s not limping, etc.

He’s one damned lucky dog. 

Summer Basketball Part One

The first of the summer basketball camps started this week; it’s the biggie of the bunch, the Michigan State Basketball Camp.  The kids get to meet the current and former players, and Tom Izzo is there in the morning and at the afternoon to address the kids/parents/etc.

Cpher:  As seems to be the norm for camps when you are assigned to random teams, Christopher is on the short end of the stick.  He’s easily the best kid on his team, and that’s a problem, because that means there’s nobody who’s really good with the ball, either dribbling or shooting. 

Today was the day that Cpher’s team was able to play a game on the main court at the Breslin Center.  His team seemed to remember that they had this big kid in the middle during the first half and passed the ball inside often.  They were winning 16-10 at the half, Cpher had 6 points.

Like always, Cpher is very good at what he’s good at.  Lots of rebounds, very accurate from down low even with all kinds of kids mobbing him.

His team forgot about Cpher in the 2nd half.  He sat in the third quarter (his team still leading 18-15 at the end of that) and when he came back on for the fourth quarter he never saw the ball down low as his teammates kept throwing up bombs from outside.  And they lost, 21-18.  Cpher’s team has played three games and lost them all (Suzanne saw another game yesterday….much of the same, when they remembered Cpher the scoring came easier, but, if he wasn’t on the court, there were no rebounds and scoring was an issue.)  The picture above is a rare event; Christopher dribbling in the open floor.  He’s doing it left-handed too….

If you click on the photo above you’ll get the video highlights from the game

Matthew:  His team seems a little more balanced; at least three or four players who can dribble and go to the basket and shoot.

 

The quarter that Cpher didn’t play gave me a chance to hop over to the Auxiliary gym to catch some of Matthew’s game.  It worked out well, right as I got there they were starting the fourth quarter and Matthew was on the floor.  His team was winning 23-12.

After wondering for a few weeks where my aggressive youngest child has gone, I guess it only took a switch back to basketball to remind him that hey, I need to be everywhere.   The first play I see he’s on one side of the court and sees the pass is going to the other side; he runs over and picks it off and heads up court.  The second play is that first photo; he has the ball and is about to drive by his friend Henry (they play soccer together) to the net.  The second picture is Matthew again driving in.  He stops here and takes the shot, and makes it.  He tells me that he had 8 points in the game

I think in the six minutes I saw him he took three or four shots, I know he picked off at least two balls (one is pretty sweet, he misses it, the play goes by him, he runs back in and picks off the next pass the other team makes).  His team is now 2-1…I think they have enough talent to always have a scorer or two on the floor.

Again, clicking on the last photo will take you to the video.

More Spring Soccer - USMNT

Last week the United States played Canada in the first game of the CONCACAF Gold Cup; the game was here in Detroit and it seemed to make sense to go down and see the game; tickets weren’t outrageous.  The whole family was going to go originally, but, Kevin had his most important final exam the next morning and asked to stay at home.

The game actually was a double-header; Panama played Guadalupe in the opener at 6 pm.  We got to our seats around 6:30 and Fric and Frac were completely engrossed in watching those two teams go at it.

 

There were only 30K in attendance at the game; little surprised by this, the National Team doesn’t play that often with the full roster, and they certainly were going to have all the starters in for this game.  We had seats in the first row of the upper level in the corner.  This is Landon Donovan about to take a corner kick.

 

The US lead 1-0 at the half; they didn’t score off the corner kick (and this shot, that came just after) but did score later in the half.

 

Tim Howard, the goalie, when he was on our end of the field.

 

 

The US really pressed the attack in the 2nd half; that was good since they were heading towards our end of the field.  This ball was played in to Jose Altidore, who I think got a head on it but the ball went just wide of the goal

And this play by Donovan went across the goal to Clint Dempsey for the….

Goaaaaaal!  2-0 Final.

A long day (didn’t get home ‘til Midnight) but worth it; the boys really enjoyed the game and were all excited to watch the US play Panama last Saturday.  I’m grateful to the USMNT for not laying the egg in Detroit but waiting until they were in Tampa on Saturday…they lost to Panama 2-1 (and they have no business losing to Canada, or Panama).  Picked Matthew up a USMNT jersey…he wore it to TNT practice on the last day of practice (the official ‘wear-your-professional-soccer-jersey-night).

TNT Spring Futbol – Game Eight

Win and we’re the champs; a tie does not cut it.  That’s the goal.

Team played hard in the first half and we are down 1-0 on an own goal(!). 

  

Matthew has been sick this last week; a pretty decent cough (I had it too…can vouch that it wasn’t very much fun).  So, we were worried about his stamina out here today but he played the best game he’s played for TNT in a month.  Very aggressive, did a great job on defense and was very good at collecting the ball and starting the offense.

The second half starts and they score again on a great play to go up 2-0.  We have chances, we have a ton of chances, but, we hit the post, their goalie makes a great save (or two, or ten), and time keeps ticking.  We’re pressing near the end and give up a third goal and that’s the final.

Soccer stops?  No…tryout training this week, tryouts next weekend, and then the weekend after that I think Matthew is doing a 4v4 tournament.  And then it will stop for a while.

Michigan Mile 2011

Even though Kevin’s too old to participate anymore, we continued our tradition of attending the Michigan Mile race.  I’d have to admit it was an afterthought; we’ve been running everywhere for soccer and we didn’t register for this until the last minute.

before the race.,,,,,

Christopher:  The Mile finishes up the Mileage Club event that the boys have been participating in school; Cpher hasn’t been the most diligent of runners (the best kids in the school ended up over 50 miles) but he did get to twenty, which is enough to get the coveted water bottle.  Running isn’t Cpher’s strength (I don’t think he’s going to be very thrilled that we signed the boys up for the Okemos Track Club this summer….) so we weren’t at all sure how this would turn out. 

Turns out it went pretty well.  He finished in about 8 minutes, which is pretty good since he started way in the back.  The best part for us is that he caught two of his more athletic friends and finished with them; I’m sure they didn’t go all out, but, Cpher started quite a ways behind them so I’m glad he kept up a solid pace for the whole race.

Matthew:  Matthew’s Michigan Mile would be funny if it weren’t so sad, and it requires some explanation.  Of all the boys, Matthew is the one who has found himself separated from us in public places the most….I can remember two or three PA announcements “Would Scott and Suzanne report to blank to meet Matthew” or something like that.  I’m not sure why this is; I think once or twice he went off with Cpher and they became separated, but, that’s how it’s been.

And Matthew had some serious separation anxiety as it became time to line up for the Mile.  Suzanne was at the top of the stadium getting ready to go collect Cpher and had sent Matthew down the aisle to find me (I was down in the stands helping Cpher get situated…the races were one right after the other).  Matthew gets down to me and is almost in tears….he was upset that he couldn’t find me (he had to go down about 20 steps, it wasn’t all that far).  I calm him down, and tell him when it’s time he needs to go sit over with the other nine-year olds.  I tell him that I will wait and watch until he goes down to the field so that there aren’t any problems.  He goes over when they call the kids, sits down, I turn my head for a second and he’s gone!  Seat is empty..I’m looking around, and he’s walking back over to me.  Gets to me, again almost in tears saying “I’m not going to do the race….you can’t make me do it.  I won’t be able to find you at the end!”.

More talking.  Another trip over to the seats where they kids need to wait.  Another trip back over to me and more discussion.  Suzanne calls, wondering where I am, I’m going to miss Cpher finishing his race (and I did miss every bit of that).  Finally convince Matthew to stay with me until they call the kids down to the field (even through that means he’ll start near the very back of the group).  I tell Matthew that I’ll walk out to the first part of the course so that he can see me and he can certainly find Mom at the end.

 

at the start.  There were nine pictures taken at the start before this one…that’s how far back he started.

So off they go.  I go up out of the stadium to see the kids and it takes a while, but, Matthew does finally come running along.  He started way back but is passing all kinds of people as he runs along.  I saw three kids that we know before I saw Matthew; he had passed two of them by the end of it.  I don’t know what time he finished in, I missed the end because of all the drama at the beginning. 

Matthew did find Mom and Dad quickly at the end of the race.  Which I guess is all that really mattered.

Matthew Art – 2011

As always, with commentary from the artiste.

 

“We were supposed to draw circles and draw one more circle inside it and draw lines to cut them in half.”

 

“We were drawing an owl in the night sky and putting tree tops and stars in the sky and the moon and it was almost winter time and we were resembling the owls coming out.”  Dad:  “Where’s the moon at?”  “Hmmmm..it must have fallen off; I’m pretty sure I put a moon on there.”

“We were drawing flowers and using black paint.  We were seeing how beautiful it could be when you used black paint on the lines and when we mixed colors.”

“This is a leaf; it was spring time and the leaves were coming out and we were resembling the leaves coming back to life.”  “The patterns are kind of like it was a little bit snowing but it was springtime and the leaves were starting to grow.”

 

“This is the sun, because it’s about to be summer.  We had to put black paint over it to make it look kind of dark and the sun is coming out.”  Dad “Is your sun smiling?”  “The black paint is matching the black smile I put on there.”

 

“This is a day at the beach….if you were scuba diving you would see fish, and jellyfish, and all kinds of stuff.   I put half a turtle at the top.”

Christopher Art – 2011

As always, with expert commentary from the artiste:

 

“My first name in outline.  I used fall colors.”

 

“I made a dragon attacking a castle.  The background and the land is watercolors.  I had to cutout the dragon and paste it on.”

 

“I made a sandwich out of paper.  The buns are made out of paper but everything else is made out of some kind of fabric.  I made a side napkin and a drink.”

 

“We were asked to make a person in whatever way we wanted to do it.  It couldn’t be wrong, just however we wanted to do it.  We had to use the same two colors for the skin.”

“A design with watercolors.”

“We made a lighthouse and glued cardboard on the back of it.  We then glued the other side to glue it to the paper; you can see how it has sky, water, and land, which we made with water colors.”

 

“I made a viola because Kevin plays the viola.”

“This is a mask I made.  It’s supposed to be for little kids or babies where the face goes on the lower part.”

“I made a tree out of oil pastes and colored the background and the leaves with water colors.”

“Ms. Alligood just said to make a design with 3-d parts and we got to color a sheet with prints and cut it out the way we wanted to to make the design.”

“I made a clay bird and nest.”

TNT Spring Futbol – Games 5 through 7

Not a lot of pictures here…..I have video, but, there aren’t a lot of Matthew highlights there and I don’t know if I feel like importing pictures out of the video (changed my mind…I grabbed a few).

Game 5:  A Friday night game in Novi; walked away with a 3-2 loss.  The other team was very motivated and we didn’t seem to be that way.  The first game in a long time that Matthew had to leave with a pretty good injury; he had wiped out on his bike earlier this week and tore up his elbow……he went to kick the ball (he went to bicycle-kick it….we’ve asked him to stop trying this until he practices it some more).  He attempted it this time and landed on that elbow and came off the field bleeding pretty good.

He did have a very nice pass (and he’s one of the few on the team who are continuing to pass early and often) that led to a goal.  His play is still more than a little frustrating though…he seems to have lost a lot of his aggressiveness.

This is Matthew at the start of the moves he makes to get free to pass the ball up for the goal.  You can see the ball, and there’s another player from the other team behind him.  He’s going to cut through and carry the ball upfield

He’s made it to midfield here; he’s beaten both of these kids (one is being a little grabby trying to slow him down) and soon after he gets clear he shoots the ball diagonally into the middle of the field to his wide open teammate

Game 6:  A Saturday night game in Livonia; we won 4-1.  Again, Matthew had a nice run down the sideline that led to a great pass that led to a goal, again, he was almost exclusively parked on defense for the entire game and that’s not a strength (the team now has too many small fast guys…and the coach is reluctant, for good reason, to put them on defense.  Hope this changes as we move on next year….).

Game 7:  Late Sunday afternoon, a 5-2 win.  Matthew did get in on offense more in this game….he gets the ball passed to him right in front of the goal, one guy to beat, and he doesn’t even try and beat him, he passes!  Now, the guy was open, and it was a good play, but, man, I wish he would focus a little more on himself right now.  Had another great chance in front of the goal on a corner kick later and completely whiffed on the ball…..just not a good day on offense.

This is the corner kick where Matthew had his chance; you can see the ball coming in and Matthew charging in as well…

And here you can see the wide open ball that he should have could have buried….but didn’t.

Not really a good day overall now that I type it out.  He crashed into the back of another boy’s head in the first half and went off the field with an injury and then complained about the heat and stomach cramps and didn’t come back on much in the second half. 

 

One game left…we win, we win our division.  I wonder where that soccer playing kid who seems to be everywhere has gone (and he was that same kid in our OSC games….I was just pulling together the tape of that last game and he was all over the place!) and hope he comes back soon.

TNT Spring Futbol – Canton Cup

Saturday Morning:  It has been as wet a spring as I can remember here and the rain is still coming.  There were very heavy storms Thursday night that forced the powers-to-be in the tournament to completely reschedule all of the games (not a small undertaking when 780 teams are coming to town!).  So, we show up Saturday morning at 11 for our first game against Carpathia.

No pictures of this game.  I think Suzanne was so disgusted by the start that she put the camera away and it never came back out.  I have video (oh, I have so much video!) to get through, but that will be a while.

Since this tournament is over Memorial Day, we lost one player to having other plans and another player to injury.  The club decided to add two players who were U9 but played U10 to our roster so that we could field a team.  One plays with my soccer team, the other, well, let’s hope his parents never surf in here because of this next paragraph.

I don’t know this kid from Adam, but our coach, before the game, tells us that he is a “goalie-stud"…and that’s what he plays most of the time.  All of us parents like this….we don’t have a dedicated goalie and the one we do have is missing this weekend.  If you go all Letterman from Electric Company, and replace the st- with a d-, well, that’s what we got.  First half is over, and we’re down 4-0.

Now, it’s not all this kid’s fault, the kids decided to come out flat flat flat and paid for it.  But I’ll take at least two of those goals, if not one more, and firmly chalk them up as ‘stupid goalie play’.  One time he comes out and doesn’t pick it up, he things he can dribble with it, promptly turns it over, and they score less than 10 seconds later.  One time, same deal, he comes out, weakly kicks it out, and one of their kids just kicks it right back over his head into the goal. 

In the second half we outscored the other team 6-3.  But the damage had been done, and we lost 7-6.  Matthew played ok, he directly lead to two of our goals but also directly led to one of theirs.  Like the rest of the team, he came out flat and slow and they paid for it.

Field update;  The best field of the tournament….mostly green, maybe not cut enough but very playable given the amount of rain.

Saturday Evening:  The big grudge match against the other local club, the Chill; it was funny how many coaches from the other club (5, plus the team coach) were there to watch.  I think they made a bigger deal of it than we did.   We won 2-1 but it could have / should have been a lot more….they have a really good goalie who stood on his head for a lot of the game.  I’d say at least 80% of the game was in their half of the field.

 

Matthew’s play went from good in the first game to ok here…..he has developed a severe case of “I’ll sit back and let my teammates do the work” and we’ve had a few discussions about that since the tournament ended.  I’ve noticed this in the last few practices I’ve seen and asked him “why are you hanging back like that?” and sadly, got to trot out the “remember, you play like you practice” chestnut this weekend….

 

But he almost punched in this corner kick; I’m not quite sure why he couldn’t get in front of it but he didn’t get control in time before the other player swooped in and kicked the ball out of there.

 

Field Update:  The picture above shows the worst of it, a large section of the field was solid dirt and mud.  But, the areas on both sides of this was pretty good grass, so, well, not as good as the first game, and not as bad as the last…..

Sunday Afternoon:  So, one win and one loss, and, if things break right here a win would move us on the championship (turns out they didn’t break right, Carpathia beat Chill 4-3 so there was no way to move on).  We start the game knowing we are playing for pride, and knowing that this team has beaten the other two by a total of 13-1.   They walk up with 11 kids in clean blue shirts….we only have 7 now (one sub for the entire game) and the boys are a filthy mess (our coach has had them dive in the mud on the field to get over it….they’ll be playing on it for fifty minutes).

This field, you see, is the worst of the bunch.  It rained hard Saturday night, and there is still standing water on this field.  Maybe 10% of the field is green, the rest is brown and one entire end of the field is solid mud.

But I will give the boys all the credit in the world….they came out hustling and full of fire and had a 2-1 lead at halftime. 

 

The game got off to weirdest start that I’ve seen in some time.  The Tigers take a corner kick, and our goalie grabs it with both hands above his head, and their kid heads the ball out of his hands into the goal.  The ref calls it a goal, the teams are lining up at midfield, and our coach is going nuts.  And I give the ref credit for doing this; he realized he made the wrong call and he switched the decision.  Especially at this age level, when the goalie has his hands on the ball, that’s it.  It’s no goal.

The other team’s coach and parents go bat-shit nuts.  I’m sure, if they had that type of goal scored against them, they would want the right call made, and I can understand being upset, but, they were a little bit over the line.  Not fun to be next to that group of hillbilly-types for the rest of the game.

They scored to tie it 1-1 (with lots of “does that one count, ref?” comments….I thought their coach was a pig and hope that I have the courage to pull Matthew away from a coach that acts like that in the future)…

 

We scored to make it 2-1 heading into the half……

 

And the boys just didn’t have enough energy, with one sub, playing in mud, to keep up in the second half and they scored four to win 6-2.  Matthew was one of the more guilty ones in not moving/hustling….at one point he was directing kids to run to the ball while he stayed in the middle and that, of all things, earned him more than a few words about being a good teammate (never mind a good soccer player) on the way home.

I guess one other thing before I stop…it’s not surprising to me that the other team, given their coach and parents, were a pushy, physical bunch.  And the poor ref, after the disaster in the first half, wasn’t calling much unless he saw it and it was obvious.  I will give Matthew full credit here….he’s not one to go down easily, and he is going to give back what he gets.  He’s not outside of the rules, but, they didn’t have a lot of success pushing him off the ball either….

Delays

I’ve been sick; work has been busy, and there’s a ton of video and pictures to go through.  Will try and get some updates published soon.

so just have some water and relax…….