Matthew: The soccer game on Saturday was a complete disaster; as much as I’ve talked here about the bad parts of the fall still showing up here it was doubly true today. Nobody was first to the ball; the entire team didn’t seem to care if the other team had possession and never challenged them. Take all that and you get a 4-3 loss to a team we probably should have beaten soundly.
Not sure how to motivate Matthew at times like these. Finally decided that I’d ask him before the next game to play like he would if his coach was in the stands….what would Coach Alex want to see him doing.
Sunday was, well, blowout day. The basketball game was a 42-0 shutout…..in the stands a) we were hoping the other team would score in the 2nd half and b) completely realizing they had no chance if we even made a minimal effort on defense. The coach swears he was trying to keep the score down and go slower in the game; I tend to think he could have done a lot more….
Another soccer game against a weak opponent and that too was a blowout, 13 or 14 to 1. Matthew scored the first goal on a free kick and then was up on offense for three or four minutes and scored again.
Cpher: A basketball game on Saturday night; we were without one of our better players and lost 36-34. Played OK but gave but too many fouls (again) and missed a lot of easy shots; Cpher went 0-3 and wasn’t close on his shots and wasn’t very good rebounding either…..oh well.
I guess the real story of the game is what happened afterwards….
I’m assistant coach; I know one of the other team’s players very well (I work with his Dad). Our head coach also knows the kid from his optometry practice. It was very obvious to us that this kid hardly played in our game against us. The league has a rule/recommendation/guidance that each player get equal paying time through three quarters…in the fourth quarter you have your discretion if you’re trying to win, etc. We had watched this team play in the tournament over Thanksgiving and we commented then that it was really noticeable how they only played 6-7 guys…….
So, after the game, after conferring with our head coach, I go over and ask the other head coach if he was aware of the playing time rule. His answers were:
1) Well, you may do it that way in Okemos, but, we don’t do it that way here. And when I replied it was a rule for the league, we went to
2) Well, file a complaint then.
I said I didn’t want to do that, I just wanted to know if he was aware of the rule. He got more upset and basically left it at if I was unhappy to file a complaint.
So that’s what we did. I think all that will happen is for the league director to give him a call and remind him of the league philosophy, but, hopefully it makes a difference going forward. Kevin taped the game, and I had to go back to look. Of the 28 minutes taped (clock running and not), the kid played 4 minutes in the first half. Of 29 min in the 2nd half, he played 1 minute.
