Game 7: We play the Okemos U14 CASL team….once upon a time I used to coach this team but all these years later there are no kids on the team that I coached. They are all classmates of Cpher though. We offered him the chance to play but he pretty firmly said ‘no’.
They were much better than I would have thought…..their goalie made a lot of nice saves and we looked downright disinterested in even playing the game. Won 3-1, but it was not pretty. I thought Matthew played well….he was one of the few kids who actually seemed to want to be out there. Really disappointed in how a lot of the boys approached this game; can’t believe I had to chide them at halftime for lack of effort.
Some good examples of Matthew’s nifty footwork in the highlights; I especially like the kids behind the goal ‘oooh-ing’ after his one move before the first goal.
Game 8: The third game against Corn. We win, we win the division. This game is different though….ODP training is at the same time so we are missing three of our starters and they are missing one, but, it is a big one, the goal scorer is gone. Find out as we get to the game we will be missing our goalie too, so, we will only have one sub. Had Christopher bring clothes along just in case we needed him!
I thought, before the game, that it would be pretty even but we had the advantage even with all of our kids missing. Turns out we won going away, 9-3. Challenged Henry before the game; “we need goals” and I knew I was probably going to be keeping Matthew and Cole, the other two kids I can count on for goals, in the back most of the game. He took my challenge to heart; he had 6!
Not Matthew’s finest game…..he did some stupid things that had me yank him from the field and park him in goal for a while. Simply put, he wasn’t playing the quick, simple soccer we keep talking about; he lingered on the ball too much and it led directly to turnovers that ended up in on our net.
