(I’m a bit burnt out on vacation posts….and the rest of them have a lot of photos to work through, so, a small detour back into the normal weekly grind)
There’s no doubt lacrosse is back….a whole bunch of games to throw on top of the endless crush of soccer practices and games. Never mind that both boys have a lot of homework to make up after missing three days for our vacation…….but we’re not here to talk about homework.
Matthew: Missed soccer practice and lax game on Monday (we won, 7-4). Lax practice cancelled Tuesday because of the cold and wet; had soccer practice inside. Wednesday was the first lax game.
(holding the fort on defense)
Like football, it is almost always soccer first, lacrosse second. So, that means Matthew hasn’t been to a lot of the practices. The end result of this may be his position on the field now….mostly defense. I think it might have ended up that way anyway; he is big and strong and they aren’t going to put some small dinky fifth grader back there just yet.
New Unis this year! Happily, Matthew’s request for #26 worked out. Matching shorts as well!
Faceoff Picture 1 of 3. I thought, when this started, that Matthew was going to win this easily…
Faceoff Picture 2 of 3. And he controlled it, and had his chances to scoop and go…but just couldn’t pull it off….
And then everyone else showed up and I forget how it turned out in the end…
The game was away, at Grand Ledge, on their very nice youth football field, with their announcers, and we won 8-5. Matthew made a few nice runs from defense up the field, the best of them was ruined because the middie-fifth-graders didn’t figure out that one kid has to stay back and we were called for offsides right when Matthew was going to shoot the ball. He was not happy. He did make it to middie twice, once in the 2nd quarter and once in the 4th quarter, and, after one sequence where he got slashed as he was shooting and we could see him wince and bend over the ball popped back out to us and was passed over to him. I told Suzanne “I guess we’ll see if he is really hurt” and he promptly took the ball, faked once, twice, three times and scored the last goal of the day…..and then winced and hobbled his way off the field.
(you can definitely see, at least early on this season, the difference between the sixth graders and the fifth graders….and I’m not saying this GL guy is a fifth grader, but, you can see the confidence in Matthew’s approach on offense)
(heading in on goal)
Matthew’s game was 6 pm to 7:15. Sun was out, but it was cold…..and a little windy.
Cpher: The boys are not on the same team this year, Cpher is now on the 7/8 team and plays right after Matthew on some nights. This is a good thing, other nights he plays after Matthew….just at a different location! Sadly, for this game, the result sucked (we lost 9-1) and the sun went down and it was even windier and man was it cold!
(not so many pictures of Cpher…the sun went down, it was crazy cold, and he was on the other end of the field for the 1st quarter. He has the new jersey (#20….supposedly in honor of Wiley’s birthday, 2/07). He has the shorts too….Matthew and I picked them up on the way here so this boy didn’t have an opportunity to wear them. Also has a sweatshirt on under all of this….did I mention it was cold?!?)
Thought Cpher played ‘pretty well’ as I told him. Always on defense, don’t think he touched the ball once, but, did what he needed to do and held his own. He is, even on this 7/8 team, the biggest kid on the field. It is obvious to me that he needs to improve his speed a little bit….will need to ask him how obvious it is to him!
Matthew Part 2: First spring soccer game of the year was Saturday. This game was the first game in the Jr. State Cup competition…..the yearly tournament that Matthew will participate in from now until, well, until his club soccer days are over I guess. You start off with pool play and then move on to elimination games….just like the World Cup and other major soccer competitions.
So, our first game is against UnitedFC, the same team we beat 2-0 in the GR Crew Cup in August. And today is the same score, we win 2-0.
Whatever ‘malaise’ has been in Matthew’s step at the end of the winter indoor sessions…well, there was no trace of it here. All over the place, hustling, getting a lot of 50/50 balls, making a lot of runs to create opportunities, just the Matthew we are used to seeing out there. Started the game at attacking-center-mid and put the ball in the back of the net about 5 minutes in! Sadly, he was judged to be offsides….(Matthew didn’t agree, of course, and our coach thought it was a harsh call as well). Played some center back to close out the first half and then back out at attacking center mid in the second half. Our coach, as we were leaving, stopped and told Matthew that he had a heck of a game and was doing a great job at ACM and would probably be there more and more in the future.
I’m sure a game report is coming…I’ll just post that on its own later.
