Last year I pulled together an indoor team for the first session at soccer-zone. Travel practice is minimal in November and December (no team practices until January although Matthew is doing some extra sessions on Tuesday and Thursday). Same group of kids as last year; the goal here is to have fun and rack up some wins as well. We, except for one kid (and Christopher, if he ends up playing as a sub like he did last year) are U13…we’ll be playing U14 to hopefully find some competition.
Game 1: Lost 7-5 to CornFC…a team with a lot of Matthew’s teammates on it. I told all of our kids that we would rotate everybody into every position, midfielder and defense. That left some kids who don’t play defense having to deal with the big striker on our team. We didn’t do well with it and let him score 6(!) goals. The other coach just left that kid up at striker for about 80% of both halves of the game.
So, we are supposed to play them again….and I’m not sure what to do. Park my better defensive players back there to deal with him? Or just keep rotating and let some of our kids get beat up and let the other team have bragging rights. A tough question. I think we are leaning towards playing more to win the next time. We’ll see.
Video available by clicking on the picture below:
(Matthew gets a rebound goal)
It is always interesting for Suzanne and I to see Matthew playing inside with some of these kids that he hasn’t played with in a few years. We (biased as we are) are happy that Matthew is one of the few (2 other kids maybe?) kids that can play defense AND play offense AND help create for others. Just surprised in many cases how some of the other kids play (or don’t play). Watching big Zach score 6 goals and seeing how he did it hopefully was a lesson for those kids……
Game 2: Won 6-1 against The Freeze.
Again, click below for the highlights. No goals in this game; this picture is from his best chance that he sends high.
Not much to say about this game; perhaps as a result of Saturday’s debacle I ended up with Matthew back on defense more than in the first game.
Video notes: The GoPro works really well inside; the goal has a cross beam that runs from the top of the goal to the back and that’s a great place to mount the camera. It is upside down, but, the camera has a setting to ‘flip’ the video as well. Regular video (for those who watch it) sucks at Soccer-zone; you are too close and all the video is through the plexiglass boards. For the second game, the video is even worse….you are really low and the video sucks even more. Viva the GoPro!
