The first tournament of the U13 year is, well, the same as the tournament last year.
Heading into it….well, I wasn’t sure what to think. I thought well, we could go 0-3 and that wouldn’t surprise me much. I could see us making the finals. The schedule absolutely sucks….we play at 10:40 am and then not again until 8 pm Saturday night. And then again at 7:50 Sunday morning. Not much choice but to stay the night down in Novi….
Anyway…..
Game 1: There are four teams in our bracket. We’ll play the other three, and the top two will move on to the final. Our first game, while against a team on the schedule as a Michigan team, PSG Nova, in fact is against a Canadian team, Ciociaro, that plays, when they play in the US, under that name. Kinda weird but whatever. They won this tournament last year (we didn’t play them). And they beat us 2-1.
Matthew has been ‘sick’ the two days leading up to this game. Stomach is queasy, lots of gastro-issues. We have to make an emergency stop on the drive down for a bathroom break. He doesn’t play much in the first half and frankly doesn’t play very well….but that’s I guess to be expected for the first game of the season(?). I don’t know….thought he had worked hard to be ready, and this weekend, illness aside, wasn’t one of his finest moments.
The challenge in playing this Canadian team is that they are in mid-season form….and it showed. The were crisp and they were, by and large, small and fast. We (and Matthew was not alone in this) had a lot of turnovers and gave them plenty of chances. And the two they converted were, sadly, cheap. The first goal was a free kick off of a very questionable hand call. The second, they earned a corner kick, and Matthew, as Matthew does, gets his head on it AND THE BALL GOES THE WRONG WAY. Instead of out, it heads towards the goal and our team doesn’t clear it out. And that was that.
Game 2: Another Canadian team. This time, they are from east of Toronto….that’s a long way so I’m thinking they are pretty good. But not so much….we dominate play and win 4-0. It’s 0-0 at halftime and I’m really hoping that we aren’t going to live to regret not scoring on some great chances in the first half. But we score four in about eighteen minutes to put the game away.
One nice thing about this new year is that we have new uniforms. And the club has decided that the colors for home and away are going to be mixed up….away uniforms are the blue with white shorts, and home is vice versa. Suzanne and I were getting quite sick of the all white uniforms we seemed to wear almost every game last winter and spring.
(A little better with this header…at least it went away from our goal. As a theme though, Matthew’s headers were ‘off’ all weekend. Not his usual self.)
(can’t really argue if he lost the ball here. In the NFL that might be holding)
Game Three: The goal this season is to do well enough in the fall to earn promotion to the MSPSL Premier One division in the spring. So, of all the games we play, the early morning clash against Rush Northville might be the most important. They are not in our division, so, not a direct competitor for one of those Prem One spots, but, I think this game is a good benchmark, since we tied them twice last year and they would be one of the four teams in their division that I think would advance.
The game, even though it is a 2-0 win for us, is even more lopsided than Saturday night’s game. The score is more a testament to their goalie making some great saves and our ineptitude in the offensive zone. They are never in it…we are never threatened. Winning this game means we are in the finals.
Finals: Against the team we lost to in the first game….a chance for revenge. And it is an even game….we miss two great scoring chances in the first half and it is tied 0-0.
Last year we rostered 18 players; this year we have 16. We were shorthanded going in since we were missing two kids to injury. One of our kids goes down with a very obvious hamstring injury in the first half…..we’ll play with two subs the rest of the way. This is our first game outside in the heat….and the other team has 18 kids. They are subbing in a player every chance they get in the second half.
And while we don’t think Matthew had a great weekend, the coach specifically pointed to the last 20 minutes of this game where Matthew played his best. He didn’t fade…he played smart, he made the right plays and seemed to get stronger the deeper into the game we got.
We’re all looking at our watches near the end…three minutes to go, two minutes to go, and then with about 30 seconds left we break through and get the goal (‘at the death’ is the soccer phrase). They kickoff after the goal and the ref gives the other team until they lose possession to us and blows the whistle….that’s it.
(three straight shutouts? I’ll take it!)
(another trophy for the collection!)
(the obligatory happy team photo)
