2014-2015: Tryouts have come and gone; there are no big changes to report. We have 16 on the team (one boy was moved down to the ‘B’ team; one boy left to do other sports). 16 is better than 18.
Operation Fitness: Both boys seems to be well, if not enthusiastic, at least not openly complaining about the plan. I think I am enjoying the agility ladder sessions the most (the boys, and the dog, get a good laugh out of me attempting the exercises).
Hard at work….
The hardest thing is the strength and conditioning work that the soccer team has developed….Matthew has definitely been winded and sore at the end of those exercises.
To, um, encourage the boys on Operation Fitness I’ve offered some lessons at the high school….
This boy is a little bit more coordinated than the other one at this stage of the driving game…..
The 4v4: We won’t be doing as many 4v4’s this summer as last…the schedule doesn’t work out for them. Matthew is gone at camp during a lot of them and then I think the soccer team schedule is going to conflict with the big one at the end of the summer.
The boys, watching the U12G final. Matthew’s, hmmm, girlfriend isn’t the right term but it is the closest. The girl-who-Matthew-is-going-out-with. That’ll work. Anyway, she is on that team.
Game 1: We lose 3-2 to Corn FC. Corn is a team of kids from Matthew’s team, but, this game is more the story of us than them. We hit the post of the goal four times in the first half….great chances, no conversion, and if you don’t score when you can you get this kind of result.
Game 2: We beat Kickstart 10-2. They aren’t that good, and we play everyone in different positions and still are scoring when the mercy rule kicks in.
Feel bad for this team…they were the ultimate victim of some very strange bracketing/scheduling decisions made by the tournament this year. There are eight teams; they have teams 1-4 play each other and teams 5-8 play each other. Teams 1-4 are the ‘good’ teams…except for Kickstart, who got walloped by every team they played. Teams 5-8 were lesser teams and while I can sit back and say the bracketing gave all of those teams some competitive games, the scheduling certainly didn’t seem like it determined who the best team was
Game 2.5: We’re not playing, but Corn is playing our next opponent BB….and they lose 4-2. That means, based on everyone’s guess at what the committee is doing, we can win our next game against BB and still move onto the final.
Game 3: We beat BB 7-4. BB is made up of six kids from other travel teams in the area and is pretty good….and we don’t miss this time and keep possession and take advantage of their mistakes. We are winning 3-2 at the half and give up two quick goals in the second half to go down 4-3….but score the next four to put it away.
So, Corn, BB, and us (oh yeah, we were named Tim Howard’s Haircut) are all tied with 2 wins and 1 loss. We think it will come down to goals allowed, and we lose out on that to Corn….because they know they need to keep the goals down against the weak Kickstart team and play that game to dominate. If it had been goal differential, we would have advanced.
Turns out it didn’t matter either way…the committee took all the teams in one ‘pool’ and there were two teams in the other bracket who had two wins and one tie. So both of them move on to the final. Really disappointing to not even have a chance to play those kids…because any of the the three good teams in our bracket would have trashed them.
