Last week, last Saturday as a matter of fact, all was well in the world of soccer. A week later the best I’m able to do is to try and put the best face on it and not be so negative….
So what happened? That will require some explanation….
As basketball ends the team pulls back together to play one indoor session of soccer and, most years during the same timeframe, we would be practicing outdoors. We’ve found, as the boys get older, and better, that the competition in the indoor spaces in Lansing isn’t appropriate…we handily beat teams that are older than us (in fact, that’s what happened in the second session we played here on our own, the team finished first playing against teams a year older).
So, I know I asked, and I think other parents asked, can we play our third session in the indoor arena down in Wixom? Not an unknown concept, other teams from our club have done that. And the word came back that, yes, we will be doing that, but, since it costs more to play down there, the club wanted an additional $50 to cover the cost. No problem, everyone paid up, the schedule came out, all games before spring break, all looked good.
Got the email last Saturday that the games down in Wixom are not going to happen. We will play our games on Sunday, and there will be a parents’ meeting on Monday to discuss.
So, last Sunday, we drove down to Wixom for our first and last games that would be played down there. We played crappy and still won 4-3, and played better but lost 3 to 2 in the second game. Matthew had a half-decent goal in the first game that I may post later…..got yelled at a lot in the second; seemed to lay back to much.
Grumbling about the current situation is a common topic during these games from all the parents.
I know why we are not playing in Wixom; instead we’ll be playing here. The club owns the facility here in Lansing, the money stays here and they need us as competition to appease the few teams they have had sign up for third session (there are two facilities in Lansing, the other place has about ten teams in this age group. There are 2 teams that aren’t part of our club in the division we are now in). In fact, that’s where we were supposed to play….it’s clearly spelled out in the literature we received in the beginning of the year. So, playing there isn’t a surprise. But, having things go down like they did is not the way to go about it….why was one decision made and now we have to backtrack?
Monday the parent meeting happens. The one word description of what the parents are told……bullshit.
- Now we need to pay extra to pay less games here in Lansing. We’ll get our $50 back for Wixom. But these games stretch until the end of April….we’ll have three outdoor games done by the time these finish up
- Why? Apparently our team lacks ‘technical skills’ and ‘needs to work on the basics in a small-sided atmosphere’. More on this later…
- Why were we ever registered to play in Wixom? “well, I don’t want to throw Alex under the bus, but….”. There’s a lot of things that I don’t like about this whole situation, but, this is one of the points that bothers me the most….there’s no way that our coach registered our team down there without club approval, in fact, it seems pretty obvious the answer was, yes, but, they need to pay extra. Until it wasn’t ok.
Ugh. But that’s the way it is going to be….
Thursday is the first practice after the meeting…..Alex can’t be there, he has parent/teacher conferences, so, our team will train with the U10s….
There’s 40 kids there for 3 coaches. It is not impressive.
Friday is the first indoor game. We are playing the U10s. And our team has to play with a handicap, five passes, in our own end, before any effort at scoring. We play this keep-away-style, and of course the other team figures out that we aren’t making any effort at moving forward and eventually just starts pressing forward….we lose ugly 3-0.
Where does it go from here? Well, I need to be more positive…the last week sucked but being pissed off about everything isn’t going to be good for me or Matthew.
The other happy part of this mix is that this looks to be the last year that Matthew’s coach will be coaching the team. He seems to be following his fiancée(?) to North Carolina and I wish him nothing but the best…I think he has done a great job with the boys.
I’ve always said that having Coach Alex leave (the team, the club, the area, whatever) would be the starting point for reevaluating the most appropriate place for Matthew to be next year. So here we go….. we’ve never tried out anywhere but where we are at now. I’m pretty sure that will at least change at this point; enough has happened for us to give the other club in town a serious look. We’ll see if we change teams.
