Kevin: Tennis Update: Ominous texts from Kevin this morning
“Coach is calling everyone into his office to tell them if they’re cut or not” “I’m next”…..and no other text from Kevin for 45 minutes…..
Matthew: Day Two brings our third game in a year against Michigan Burn….and both previous outings have been disasters, a 6-1 spanking and a 7-0 humiliation (it could have been 20-0). My expectations are appropriately low….play hard like yesterday, keep it within five goals.
Game 3: So, we’re losing 5-0 at halftime and Matthew looks like a shade of the kid we saw yesterday….getting yelled at a lot by his coach. We go on to lose 6-0. I tape Matthew, exclusively, in the 2nd half and we will watch some of that this week….
Not much else to be said here. Coach has a seriously long conversation with the kids at halftime and has another seriously long conversation with the team after the game.
Game 4: Into the finals against….the Michigan Burn. Run into the coach between the games (Kevin and I volunteered all day at the tournament, he is picking up a lot of hours towards his National Honor Society commitment this weekend) and Alex says “We’re mixing it up, it will be different”
And it certainly was…we lost 3-2 in a great game.
I guess three big things happened 1) we came out more ready to play, 2) Alex changed our formation and 3) Alex made the decision to dedicate one person to eliminating their best player from the game……
And I guess the fourth thing to talk about is something I knew from before when we lost big to them…even then, when their team was winning, the Burn parents are pigs….
So, formation: we normally play a 1-4-2, Matthew is usually the center-defensive-mid in this diamond-looking midfield structure……the Burn played this 2-3-2 thing against us. In game one this turned into Matthew playing back more and more on defense turning us into a 1-3-3 and never getting the ball out of our end to attack the two defensemen…..
I don’t know if I’m even really sure what the heck we played in Game 2…I asked Alex to explain it to me and he came up with a 1-3-2-1, our normal forward, 3 mids (all of these mids tasked with begin center mids, no left or right mids), 2 defensemen (who are told to play right up on the two Burn forwards) and one sweeper (who is told to double-team their best player when possible and clear every ball either out of bounds or upfield out of the way).
20 minutes in it’s 0-0….and unlike the first game we are taking it to them. We, in general, don’t fare well against high-possession teams, we are quick to play off and let them do what they want and when you let teams dictate to you…… The second game, we are marking, we’re double-teaming and they are turning the ball over and are back on their heels…
(a series of three photos showing the master of redirecting balls in the air at work…)
We score, finally, and we are up 1-0 and you can see the kids just ramp up. Alex is yelling DO NOT LET IN A GOAL IN THE NEXT MINUTE….and of course, we do. It’s 1-1 to the half.
In the second half, they score, and score, it’s 3-1. We cut it to 3-2 and have some chances, and especially have a few chances late, but can’t get it done. I guess it’s a form of respect, the Burn was in full stall mode over the last three minutes…. the coach had a sub ready to go in at every opportunity and they were getting more than a few warnings from the ref….
Parents: oh man did they not like that we were marking and pressuring them….just crazy the things they were saying…..at the beginning of the game I was helping Suzanne set up and asked her “are you sure you want to sit here (in the middle) next to the other parents?”….boy did she regret that (I was sitting on the other side so I could tape….have to set up out of the way of the assistant referees…..
Kevin: (later) more texts from the front:
“He (coach) was pretty vague about my position. He basically said I’m in the top 20 and to come to the (varsity) meet tomorrow, but that he was going to experiment and mess around with the lineup”
“I’m also fairly certain he hasn’t seen any of Kyle and I’s matches, because he said my serve was inconsistent….”
(Dad texts Kevin and asks “Did you correct him?”)
“Yeah, I reminded him that I held my serve every time in the past two matches”
