Getting ready for the season, part 1

 

I was going to do this all in one post, but, it may be a few days before I get the other photos.  So, we’ll go this route…

(I volunteered to help out at uniform distribution…the benefit of this is that I could make sure the boys got the numbers they (and I ) wanted…)

A week from Sunday football(!) kicks off around here.  Took a lot of coercing and prodding to get Matthew to continue football this year.  But, I’ve always thought that he should experience the other end of the team…being the 5th grader on a 4/5 team.

And yeah, being that 5th grader, being a good 5th grader, well Matthew looks to have a lot of responsibilities.  They’ve divided the team in to two; one set plays offense in the first half and defense in the 2nd and vice versa.   In Matthew’s group…he is the the fullback on offense, the linebacker on defense.  And he’s the kicker for the team as well…..

Special Teams:  Well, yeah, that soccer background helps.  Can consistently boom kickoffs 25 to 30 yards; hasn’t missed an extra point yet. 

Offense:  He’s a moose; it takes some effort and good tackling to bring him down.  Still likes to slow down and make a move right in the hole; trying to convince him to hit that hole at full speed and when he is past the defensive line, that’s the time for the move, or the spin, or the stiff arm.

Defense:  I guess this story stays it all.  First or second day of practice with pads, they are walking through the offensive and defensive plays.  Coach finally says “Ok, we’re going to go live for this one…” and Matthew very loudly and very enthusiastically says “Oh have I been waiting for you to say that!”.  And makes the next three tackles…..

One of the downsides of his increased role is that we’ve always thought soccer would come first in conflicts….we’ve had to rethink that one quite a bit.  Happily the conflicts look to be few….

(I’m good friends with the head coach….I wonder what the hell was going through his brain to make this kind of face in the team photo.  He’s the last person that should be the focus of the picture….)

Tennis – Quad #5

 

All of the switching in the last quad settled down in this one; Kevin and Henry the whole way through….

First match was against RHSC…..didn’t see any of this.  Found out later that they were up 4-3 in the first set….and then lost the next NINE games to lose the match.  Ugly.  Ugly.  Ugly. 

Saw most of the second match, against Holly.  Won the first set pretty convincingly and were up in the second set…and then things started coming off the rails.  Realized that Kevin/Henry are pretty quick to put their heads down and get down on themselves.  Realized that, at times, coaching for this team is non-existent (they got no advice, zip, zilch, nothing, during this match).  And realized that, if a team wants to call balls that are ‘in’ as ‘out’ against you, they can (and Holly did) and Kevin/Henry need to learn to not be frustrated by that.  And to not be generous on balls Holly hits to them…

Did not see the third match but understand they played well. 

So, a positive kind of outing yesterday.  Not much really matters in these quads but perhaps seeding in the state tournament…..Holly and NF are both Div 2 and will count towards that.  Hope that this is the end of the shuffling and now Henry/Kevin can play and get used to each other.  I can’t believe this is the end of it though….the lineup, while consistent for this quad, isn’t what I think it would be….

The Post-Tournament Post: GRCC 2012

 

Blue skies, but *hot*…..we brought the canopy and will pull that out for the afternoon games so that the boys aren’t baking on the bench…..

(getting ready to start Game 1…yes, that’s Cam over there with red tips in his mohawk)

So how did my predictions fare?  In game 1 they were dead on…we cruised to a 8-0 win.  Matthew played pretty well…he was sprinting, he was heading the ball, he was passing, just doing really good stuff.  He scored the seventh goal and had a big assist on the eighth….

(I think he misses this one)

Missed more than a few headers though…they would just go over his head.  I’m going to show him some film of this….if he misses once he should probably go five yard further back until he understands the goalie’s range…..

The other team wasn’t good…..we could dribble and pass with ease.  I guess, in the end, it was a good warm-up for Game 2.

(waiting for Ole to bring it, latican-style!)

We knew, from the website, that Vardar South had beaten Ole 5-1 in the other first game this morning, so, we need to win here to keep up to hopefully make it pass the group stage of the games…..

(how do you say “you shall not pass” in latican-style?)

Ole SC was better, as predicted.  We were winning 4-1 before giving two goals back to win 4-3.  Kind of a different game than the first one…..

(first in series of three photos…..)

Matthew again had an awesome game; he had a sweet assist on the first goal and his hustling and footwork led to a great cross that turned into our fourth goal….

As near as I can tell, latican-style means “we will pressure you and force us to beat us one-on-one”.  It was interesting to see which players of our team were able to deal with this and which ones struggled…

(second in a series….latican-style means this guy is supposed to take Matthew…)

Matthew, not surprisingly, can play latican-style just fine.  Beat one kid, beat two kids, ok, fine with him.  He made this move, he made another move, he ‘megged’ one dude (kicked the ball one way and circled the dude to the other side to get the ball….smaller quicker soccer players usually go with this move), just a pretty cool display of where Matthew is at right now soccer-wise.

(third in a series….Mathew wins this battle of latican-style playing)

So we win 4-3 and know that it means we need to win tomorrow to move on.  Turn out that the way the rest of the tournament went that if we tie we move on as well…

Saturday ended with Matthew getting a chance to play goalie for the White team…..I mention it here because Matthew has asked to play goalie and was excited for it, and happily, still wants to play some goalie.  But his team was overmatched and quit in front of him and they lost 12-2….Matthew got shelled.

There are no pictures from Game 3 on Sunday morning…..(edit….Henry’s Mom just uploaded some photos…let me put them here…..

(HM photo 1:  Matthew hoping to get a rebound, latican-style)

(HM photo 2:  Matthew taking it latican-style to another poor Ole player…..I wonder if I’m going to get any hits for the words latican-style in search engines soon…)

(HM photo 3:  More latican-style own-age)

(HM photo 4:  the best of the HM photos…working hard here!)

where were we…oh yeah, no photos in the Vardar South game….Suzanne said it was too intense to take photos.  I have some video, but, really, didn’t do that because the game got so crazy and out of control….

We came out slow and were down 1-0. on a very questionable missed offside call and then down 2-0 after our goalie, again, tips a corner kick into our own net(!…this is very frustrating to me…it shouldn’t happen, and it’s happened twice this year in the biggest games we are playing in.)….

HM has one photo from this game that I saved….

(Coach Alex getting a yellow card)

Several more VS breakaways occur without the correct offisde call….Coach Alex progressively goes a little more insane and finally the refs (who deserved his abuse) give him a yellow card (and Alex deserved the card for the abuse he gave them).

We rally….we score once it’s 2-1 them….we score again before half, it’s 2-2 as we head to the break. 

I think we give up a goal maybe 10 seconds after kickoff in the 2nd half…..it’s 3-2 them.  The refs do some more stupid offside calls….the VS coach gets mad, Alex gets irked about the time-wasting, and the refs, who clearly told both coaches that there would be no more abuse after the half, give the VS coach a yellow and give Alex another yellow, that’s red, he’s gone for the rest of the game.

In the first half, VS dominated the first 10 minutes of the half and then we slowly but surely gained control of the game, whether that’s from them slowing down or us waking up…..but the same thing happened in the second half…as time went on we wore them down and then finally with about 10 minutes to go we punched in a goal and tied it 3-3.  And the game stayed that way to the end….we move on to the semi-finals.

Matthew played a whale of a game; very physical…he took a ball to the gut while jumping to block it…kept running while wincing and playing through it.  Made his best effort to head a ball in for a goal and had to crouch real low, took the ball at a funny angle and twisted his ankle a bit, still got up and hobbled upfield to play defense.

So, we play in the semi-final against Canton Celtic 02 Black….we played them twice last fall and they ate our lunch.

And they ate our lunch again.  We lost 9-1….the 1 being a Matthew free kick with about 3 minutes left that he scored on from about 20 yards out.  A really good shot.

it was close for a while….2-0 with maybe 10 minutes to go in the half.  But we reverted to kick-ball not soccer, and just kept giving the ball back to them…..

(Matthew is tasked here with guarding #30 on the corner kick.  He’s a head taller than Matthew)

(this game wasn’t one of Matthew’s finer moments….tired?  I think he needs to be more of a leader when things go south and everyone stops running and puts their heads down…..sometimes he is, sometimes he isn’t….)

(this picture sums up the last game pretty well….this guy will get by three of our players, and then beat a fourth…..should never happen)

Good tournament, played well….and have an ass-kicking to think about as we move forward towards the season….

The Pre-Tournament Post: GRCC 2012

 

Another tournament for Matthew’s TNT team this weekend; this time over in Grand Rapids.  We’re staying the night Saturday night, leaving a teenage boy to keep up with the dogs.

The Crew Cup is a big tournament; 300 teams in all.  There are 24 U11 boys teams divided into two divisions, MLS (for Major League Soccer) and World Cup.  We have a team in each bracket.   The last tournament, here in Lansing, had 10 teams for U11.  So, some different teams and some better competition.

Here’s my pre-match scouting report……

Game 1 - Crew Kentwood '02 Black:  If we don’t win this game it’s going to be a long weekend.  I think they are the weakest of the three teams we are going to play.  We’ve never played them, and they are a regional team (Kentwood) around Grand Rapids.  Just going by the divisioning for the Fall, the GR Crew team we beat pretty handily in the first tournament is slated to play U12 2nd division.  These guys are slated to play U11 2nd division.  We have played another team in that division in a scrimmage…we won 9-1.  Matthew and another really good kid were missing from that scrimmage.

Game 2 – Ole SC 02 Black:  I do like the way this tournament shapes up for us….each game gets progressively harder.  This outfit is also from the Grand Rapids area but is very ethnic; they play “latican-style”.  I don’t expect to hear much English on the field.  We (Matthew’s TNT team) have never played this team but I have…when I was coaching CASL.  I talked about that debacle here.  It was ugly, we were missing kids, and I’m reasonably sure that Matthew’s current team is better than this bunch.  As long as they play well.

Game 3 – Vardar South 02 First Team:  This is the game I’m interested in seeing.  They are good; they were finalists in the Canton Cup last year, beating the other local travel team pretty soundly in the process.  They’ve done well in their league and in other tournaments.  Looking forward to this game; it will most likely determine if we move forward into the semi-finals.

Semi-finals and Finals:  If we make it this far, I would rate us the underdog against any of the other opponents I see in the other groups.  Any win, or reasonably close game, is complete gravy at this point.

We will see……10:30 am tomorrow the fun begins!

Tennis – Quad #4

 

A little more success in this quad; AA Greenhills is the defending Div 4 state champ, LC was 2nd, and RGL was top ten in Division 3.

I guess the biggest news was that the coach came up and talked with me as I was taping the first game…..said that he would be paring different people with Kevin today; he was trying to figure out who the best fit would be.  Seemed to ask if Kevin was bothered by the switching, I said no, Kevin could care less (although one of the three partners did a few things to annoy Kevin during their match).  I saw the full RGL match, where Kevin was playing about as well as he could play and was just blowing away the kids from RGL on his serve…they couldn’t return it.

Only saw the last quarter of the LC match…..more unforced errors here; Kevin said they made it a lot tougher than it should have been.

Tennis – Quad #3

 

No newspaper listing this time…..but from a different paper.

“Grand Rapids Forest Hills Northern defeated Okemos 7-1 and Holland West Ottawa 6-2, but lost to No. 1-ranked Midland Dow 8-0 on Monday.”

We finished the quad and 0-3.  Was pretty ugly yesterday.

I watched Kevin and Parth in the 6-1, 6-4 loss to Midland Dow….they rallied some in the second set but weren’t really in it.  They got blasted 6-1, 6-1 by Northern next and I watched most of that.

Decided to not watch the last game (and do some work!) and wished I had gone, they lost 6-4, 3-6, 10-8 to Ottawa…..Kevin described the match as really close throughout.

Another quad Thursday….I think the competition is dialed back a little bit this time (Dow is the Div 2 state champ, FHN was #3 in Div 3 and Ottawa was top 10 last year in Div 1)……

Ox Roast 2012 – Day Two

 

Arrive back at Dewitt HS at 8:45 for Sunday’s games.  We are seeded #2 out of 7 for the rest of the day; three teams went 3-0, the #1 seed (those damn girls!) didn’t give up a goal, we gave up one, and the other team gave up more than 1………

This is the only picture worth saving from Game 1, another 7-0 blasting of the Portland Punishers.  The team started out really slow (it was early in the morning) but came around as the game went on…..

Game 2, against the Toros Locos, which is a bunch of kids from the other travel club in town.  I know four(!) of them, either have coached them at one point or another or Matthew has played with them. 

Not thrilled that they cheated…the five kids they had on Saturday aren’t the same five kids on Sunday…..I could have made a big deal about this but did not; if we didn’t beat them it’s because we stink, not because of them bringing in a ringer.  And injuries (or life) happen, some kids can’t play, etc…..this happened to me two years ago with Cpher’s team.  But I walked up to the other coach and told him that we had a different player so that there wasn’t even a suggestion of funny business…..I didn’t get that same consideration for this game.

Trying to intercept a ball/  Not sure what he’s doing here….

We score very quickly, it’s 1-0 and it stays that way through the half.  Lots of opportunities, but, our shots are going just wide.  One of my main coaching points with the team is to pass the ball when near the goal or make a move and then score….we aren’t going to score breaking in on the sweeper in front of the goal and shooting straight at him.  In this game, in the first half, the boys repeatedly did not pass and bounced shot after shot off that guy…….

They score early in the 2nd half to tie it 1-1.  A little afraid we’ll get down but we score again soon after that…and again, and again.  It’s a 4-1 final and a good game…..but if we play like this in the final, we’re not going to do well……

A lot of photos like this from the early games, boys trotting to midfield after a goal.  This might be after Matthew’s goal, who listened at halftime and when he had the ball right in front made a little move to make the sweeper move and  then punched the ball into the goal for the score….

Matthew, playing against Team INCAZ….

So here we go, into the finals, again, against Isabelle, Nick, Camille, Abby, and Zane. 

I told Suzanne two things earlier in the day.  1)  I did not think we would win this game and 2) we certainly weren’t going to win if we played like we played this morning.  Boys seem ready…they understand they have to do all of the little things we’ve talked about all weekend and above all…do not, do not treat the girls like girls.  Treat them like boys.

I never would have guessed, even in my wildest dreams, that the game would have happened like it did in the first half.  We dominated that possession; most of those ten minutes were spent in front of their goal and had to make some super saves to keep it scoreless.  I think there was one stretch where we had five or six corner kicks in a row.

But it’s 0-0 as time runs out and they get a breakaway….Matthew tracks it down and I’m telling him “just kick it out of bounds”….the last thing we need to do is something cute and be down 1-0 after dominating the first half.

Second half starts….We score to make it 1-0.  That’s big, confidence is high.

They score 30 seconds later and it’s 1-1.

We score again, 2-1.  And damn it, they score again less than a minute later, it’s 2-2.

And that’s the way it ends.  It’s the championship game, so, we’re off to penalty kicks.

I had to decide what order to put the kids in….and I basically went with who-would-deal-the-worst/best-with-missing-the-kick-and-losing-the-game.  So Matthew, who tends to be level headed and deal with pressure pretty well, is last.  Four kicks each. We are second.

They miss.  We miss.

They make it.  We make it.

They make it.  We make it.

They make it.  And Matthew is last…and must make it or the game is over.  He knows this without anyone telling him.  He sets up the ball, takes his steps backwards, looks at the goal, takes a very noticeable deep breath….and steps up and strikes it.

It rolls….it rolls…..it’s going to be close…..and it hits the right post, bounces across the goal to the left post, and bounces into the goal.  The ref has to come over and check, it is clearly all the way across the line, we are on to sudden death.

I could have changed the order for the next kicks but at this point didn’t see how that would matter.  Another coin flip, we are second again.  And the first girl, who missed the first one, steps up again and misses again. 

Henry, shown here, is about to step up for the kick to win the game.  Suzanne really nailed these pictures…

After he hits it, watching it roll.  Love this shot….

And after it rolls in.  We win 2-2 (4-3) in penalty kicks.  Lost of happiness, lots of relief, especially on the parent side.  Suzanne said she’s never seen a game like that, and it’s been a while since we’ve had a happy ending in a stressful game.  One other parent said that he could watch that high-level soccer for another hour or so….it really was a great game.

One other highlight from the weekend is that Cpher replaced Kevin at the video camera….and I didn’t realize he had switched over to play by play commentary during the last minute or two of the penalty kicks.  Cpher, and Henry’s brother Sam, are in classic form during Henry’s final strike and afterwards.

You can click on the picture on the left for Matthew’s kick, the picture on the right for Henry’s kick.

 

“It’s all over!!!”

Helium, Krypton, Xenon , Argon (AJ), Neon (Cam), and Radon (Myles)….the Champs!

The Goofy Champs….

“I’m out….see you later!”

Ox Roast 2012 – Day One

 

For the third straight year, we make an appearance at the largest 4v4 tournament in the area, the Dewitt Ox Roast 4v4.  The quest is to stop those damned girls (and Zane and Nick) from winning the championship for the third time!  It will be difficult. 

I’ve assembled Matthew and four of his teammates for this challenge.  We were going to call our team “Call Us Maybe” and have the boys wear some shirts that I found (for college students) that said “I (heart) HS Girls”……but, couldn’t get them in Youth Large so had to go Plan B.

That’s AJ, sporting argon, that’s Matthew sporting krypton….we are the Noble Gases. 

Yeah, I really hit 10 on the geek/dork scale this year.  But, I had a bunch of people, like last year, come up and say that our shirts were really cool.  Each of the five kids (and coach) is a different element that’s a noble gas.  The symbol from the periodic table is on the front, a bunch of facts about each element on the back…..

Game One: A 6-0 blasting of the Portland Punishers…..we started off really slow (missed at least five golden opportunities for goals) but I don’t think they had one serious chance at even scoring a goal. 

In other years I’ve had to coach ‘more’…for one reason or another I’ve had younger kids that needed more ‘words’ or kids who weren’t as ‘good’ as some of my other players (read as ‘Matthew’) and I’d have to “coach them up”.  Not this time, these kids, for the most part, have it, and we’re heavy on the basics (hustle, move without the ball, pressure the ball) and some new wrinkles (double-team when you can, make runs into the zone on kick-ins)

And for the first time ever (even though he’s playing defense here) I’ve felt comfortable enough with another player (Myles, ahead on the left here) to put Myles back on defense and release Matthew to midfield.  I think that works out best for our team, Matthew has become a pass-first kind of guy almost all of the time and Myles can sometimes linger over the ball and miss passing opportunities at midfield.  But he’s super quick and aggressive on defense….

Near the end of this game (right before we scored our 5th goal?) Matthew got hurt, took a cleat to his left ankle and came hobbling off almost in tears… He walked it off for the rest of the game and was fine afterwards…….

I have video of the game (Cpher, in a guest appearance as videographer.  He did well, earned $20 for his work….and after each goal would announce the score to the camera……he couldn’t keep our team name straight to you would get announcements like these “That’s Toxic Gases 5, White Team 0”), Matthew wanted to see his injury so we went and looked for it.  At the time, I thought he got hurt and then hobbled off….turns out, he got hurt, jumped back into the play, then bent over wincing, and then jumped back into the play again and scored a goal and then hobbled off!

I like this tournament.  It’s well organized, it’s well attended, and it’s a really good time.  But they have this rule….no ball over 4’ in height (to promote ball control and prevent injuries)….anything that goes over that height is blown dead and the opposing team gets a free kick at the spot of the kick.   This rule is becoming more of a pain in the ass now that balls in the air are a major-Matthew-strength.

But, my major complaint is that I would like this rule if they could ever be consistent in enforcing it.  But they aren’t.   It’s a judgment call that varies from ref to ref and sometimes they let it go when they shouldn’t, or sometimes they over enforce it to the point if the ball goes over the waist they blow it dead.  Just frustrating….

Game 2:  An 8-0 whitewash of the Lawn Stars.  Not much to say here other than at 7 we had to take a player off the field…and still scored a goal.   On the video I record who scores a goal and who has an assist; Matthew had four assists; we had a ton of goals with long passes out of our end for breakaways for goals….

No pictures of Game 3 (at least where you can see the opponent, but, this might have been).  We won 4-1 and it was a lot tougher than the first 2 games, we were tied 0-0 at the half.  Their one goal had me in fits, hit one of our kids heads, bounced across the field directly to someone on their team who one-timed it in while we were out of position.  I’m yelling “Why isn’t that a high ball??  It hit his head!!”….and of course, no answer, the ref just completely missed it. 

Tennis - Quad #2

 

The coach scheduled a lot of quads before the start of the regular season…..we are a young team  and he wanted the kids to get a lot of game play.

 

More not so great pictures from a zoomed out videocamera….

Kevin has a new partner today, Parth, a freshman.  They have been installed as the #4 doubles team.  We’ll see if that holds up….because…..

It could have gone better.  It went about as well as could have been expected though.  They won the match they needed to win; they were ok but not great against Lakeview and Huron is the defending Div 1 State Champ….pain was expected there and pain was delivered.  I wish they had, as a pair, been more aggressive against Lakeview, Parth certainly decided to dial his serve way back and they were a big hard-hitting team and took full advantage of that.

The highlight of the day was the 2nd set against GP North….they were down 5-4 and won the next three games to win 7-5.  Pretty good stuff.

Tennis – Quad #1

 

The varsity season began with the first of many ‘quads’, basically meets with 3 other teams.  Yesterday, one team didn’t show, so, it was a quad with two other teams….

Kevin/Kyle is no more….Kyle now playing with others (and seems to be firmly on the varsity team and playing regularly).  Kevin, you could argue, got hosed, didn’t play at all against the best team there and played #4 doubles against Williamston.  I stopped by to tape his first match and it was brutal; they won 6-0, 6-1 and should be embarrassed that they even gave up a game….the team from Williamston was not good.

Another quad Friday; Kevin already knows he is paired at four doubles with Parth (you can find him at #3 singles against Williamston).  Hope they do well…..

(It’s hard to tape tennis….there’s nowhere to stand high enough to get all the action.  I stood in the corner of the fenced in area to get this video, but, that doesn’t make for good photos since I’m all zoomed out to catch the action…)