As I know I’ve mentioned, the lack of basketball over the next six weeks prompted me to pull together an indoor soccer team. Decided to recycle the orange tops from the soccer-in-the-sand tournament so went with the name “Orange Crush”. A mix of players that Matthew has played with over the years….three kids from the teams I used to coach, 5 kids from ( T ), 3 kids from ( C )…some overlap, so, a total of 9 kids total. Everyone, no matter who they play for, has white shorts and white socks, so, that's the uniforms we rolled with.
Ask everyone if they will be there for Saturday’s game…..only one person says no, that they’ll be late. So Thursday one kid says “sorry, going to the football game, I will miss”. Friday I get another email like that. And today, I get an email saying that another kid will be late….I realize I won’t have enough kids to start the game……
We registered the team all the way up in U14…..I do have one U13 on the team but the rest are all U12…playing up here in Lansing indoors we’ve learned we need to play up an age (or two!) to have competitive games. After asking one person to sub (they couldn’t); I finally realize that the answer is staring me in the face…
(yeah, that’s right, returning to competitive soccer after a 2 1/2 year break!)
I get my two ‘late’ players back right as the game starts but Cpher starts the game on defense. We go on to cruise to the 5-0 win. Not sure how old the team was that we played against….I think they had some 8th graders but I’m going to guess about half were 7th graders.
Cpher alternated from fearful to excited before the game started today. Mom and Dad ended up looking forward to the events…it’s been a while since we’ve seen the boys playing soccer together….
He acquitted himself well…..played solid defense, had a handful of chances in front of the goal, but, looked like a defensive lineman playing soccer on any number of occasions
Had a header! Really really wanted to score a goal as the game went on and asked me throw him in up at forward. I did, and he had a few chances, but, couldn’t convert.
This boy had an eventful day…..missed a goal from literally two feet away from the net because instead of just passing it into the goal he decided to nail it as hard as he could….and hit it almost straight up in the air instead of forward. Played solid in the field whether he was the forward, at mid, or on defense. Had one or two sequences where he made some exquisite passes that led to some great opportunities.
Played some goalie…ended up getting hurt when one of the kids got into him a bit when he went down to make a save and had to come off the field with a bloody lip…
The only picture of the two boys in action….Matthew very deliberately trying to pass the ball across to Cpher to give him a chance to score. Cpher completely whiffs on the shot.
It is easy to forget sometimes how unselfish Matthew is sometimes….as the game is ending we get a two-on-one. Matthew is breaking in on the left with the ball, Nick T is coming in on the right. Nick T has two goals at this point…nobody would have blamed Matthew at all for keeping the ball and taking the shot. Matthew keeps coming, keeps coming, sucks the goaltender in and makes the nice sweet slow pass across for the easy tip-in by Nick.
Hey, I look a little taller than Cpher today!
Glad Suzanne took these photos!
