Didn’t feel like writing about last weekend’s soccer disaster….so, way behind on this front.
Christopher: Wow, what was the last game I talked about here? I need to check….
Ok. Three games to talk about; Played at Holt almost ten days ago; they won 7-5. Played twice last week; tied Dewitt 5-5 and beat up on Haslett 8-2 or something like that.
First of three pictures from the Dewitt game; I was not there (off on a work trip) but another Mom grabbed a few shots….I say it a lot but it is pretty clear here…Cpher the tallest on the team.
Doing his thing on Defense. Does well with guys who come in slow and stop, does well on loose balls, does well stopping guys who think they can barrel through him. The problem, for Cpher, and for most anyone, is the guy who makes a move about 2-4’ away from him and then tries to accelerate by…
But, as always, is out on the field almost all of the way…..
The most recent game was last Wednesday against Haslett. This game was never in doubt but the big guy was busy…..
One of my friends coaches the Haslett 8th grade soccer team…he has told me to watch out for #81…he’s seen him play lacrosse and he gets the ball and basically runs in a straight line towards the other goal and look out who gets in his way.
I knew Cpher wouldn’t be getting out of the way….and the guy jumped into him and Cpher ended up on his butt. But, the guy did not score and that is really all that counts. He made a few more runs later on in the game; I noticed he didn’t run towards Cpher but instead went for the other guys. He did score once right as Cpher came over to get him….
Matthew: Let’s start with the lacrosse. Also played at Holt….we won 3-2. We only stayed for the first half before scooting off to soccer practice….and Matthew was a stalwart on defense. Took the cheap shot of the year near the end….he was running upfield with the ball near the sidelines and the Holt coaches were telling their kids to push him out of bounds. They did….but one guy came in way later after Matthew was a few feet out and just planted him…a solid cross-check to the chest that spun Matthew around. He hit hard and complained later in the week about being sore in his back and neck…..the minor injuries are beginning to add up.
Matthew went to lax practice on Monday (easier for Suzanne to take both places at the same time while I was gone) and was pleasantly surprised to see Haslett show up for a game! Some confusion in the schedule but practice is cancelled! It’s a full squad game so he doesn’t play a lot and we win 4-3.
Wednesday is a split squad game with a twist…band concert tonight! So, there are normally 16 kids on the split squad, tonight. Only 11. You need 10 to play. Again, we’re playing Haslett, this time away, not at home. But for a 1-sub game the boys play tough and tie 3-3.
Thought Matthew played really tough except for some decision making…we were a man-down at one point and he should have kept running with the ball (and kept possession) instead of tossing it blindly upfield at one point.
Much as I’d like to see Matthew at middie….he is really growing into and liking playing defense. Could be a lot of fun next year watching Matthew and his brother hold the fort on defense.
Soccer starts out with a game week ago Saturday; the spring fixture against Windsor. They ripped us apart 9-0 in the fall so a good measuring stick of where we are at (I think).
We lose 2-0 on a really windy afternoon. Thought we played well even though they controlled the flow of play. Our two goals against were a result of a troubling trend recently…some seriously stupid positioning by a few players.
Sunday…late Sunday…is literally the game of the year. Beat Vardar Red and we move on to the knock-out stages. Would be a shocking surprise if we lose….VR has lost to Ole 7-1 and tied United 2-2….by the results, we look to be better…
Of course, there is a reason you play the games.
Coach Stu was not happy with the team’s performance on Saturday…..told the boys that he watched who showed up on Saturday to play and who didn’t and would play those kids accordingly on Sunday. Matthew played well on Saturday (I’ve been asking him after each practice and game to rate his play on a scale of 1-10….he is pretty spot on about it…gave himself a 4 for his work against Ole but was up at an 8 for Saturday. He did not start against Windsor (and I don’t know how much stock to place in starting and not-starting decisions that Stu makes) but was almost certain, given what happened Saturday and what Stu said about his play specifically, that he would start Sunday.
Not so much. Comes in midway through the first half and then is subbed out pretty quickly (turns out Stu wasn’t happy with some of his turnovers…..more on this later). Comes back on in the second half, plays hard and plays well but gets stepped on / cleated by another kid and is definitely hobbling around. Stu asks him if he is ok, Matthew says yes but Stu subs him out anyway.
The team, as this team and in fact if I’m honest, any team Matthew seems to play soccer for, fails to capitalize on our chances early (and we had them!) and the other team gets the break and the bounce and scores to make it 1-0. All we needed was a tie to go through to the next round…..we pushed forward and put a shot off the post but couldn’t get one past the goalie. We lose 1-0.
A damned disappointing result.
So a few things here:
1) Can’t really argue with the decision to pull Matthew due to injury…..but not happy about how he was treated in the first half. Because honestly, if we are pulling kids for turnovers he should have benched the whole team.
2) Coach Stu, after the game, told the kids this loss was on him. Which is a lot of baloney, he wasn’t out there kicking the ball around BUT don’t think his tactics were very inspired. For a coach that seems to have wanted to play this possession-based soccer, he has been quick to switch to this quick long-ball style that our opponents have wanted to play. Not surprisingly, we’ve lost both of those games (when we play this style Matthew and another boy become liabilities because they are not the quickest on the team…..both of those boys are tougher and make good physical plays. I think we are weaker when we don’t play them as much.)
3) While the decision to come to ( C ) has been good on many fronts IF you choose to measure on results then it was a total disaster. ( T ) has overachieved all year; we haven’t won a game we weren’t supposed to win and lost many games we should not have lost. Definitely not what we thought would happen. The does-it-matter-moment? No…Matthew insists he is happier here and would not go back (if he even could…)
4) #1 and #2 have really brought the point home for Matthew that he needs to improve his speed and agility…..he will be doing a lot of running this summer.
No game reports; I will have to bug the coach about what’s up with those…..
This weekend brought two games; Friday night and Saturday morning. We tied 1-1 against Detroit PAL Friday; that was the score at half and then the thunderstorms came in and that was that.
On Thursday, at practice, I noticed Matthew was hardly running at all. He rated the practice as a ‘1’…says it hurt him in his left foot every time he ran.
We had a serious talk Friday afternoon about not playing Friday night or Saturday…he said it still hurt him at gym on Friday afternoon….he wanted to try it, Mom and Dad didn’t want him going out there and going half-speed…he had to go 100% or not at all. Talked with Coach Stu; told Matthew if he had pain he had to ask to come out.
The team walking off the field courtesy of the GoPro camera, mounted on the goal post….you can see the rainbow to the left. It didn’t rain for long, but I got soaked between packing up the chairs and retrieving the camera. Will grab some photos from the video when I post the game reports (if we ever get them).
Matthew never asks to come out on Friday; says it hurt a little bit but didn’t really bother him. Talk with Coach Stu before the game on Saturday morning and he says he had to remind Matthew to tell him if it hurts (I like that…have always liked that Matthew will try and play through things, but these games, especially after the state cup loss, really don’t mean much and we didn’t want him getting hurt even more and missing weeks instead of days)
Saturday morning we played Saginaw. Went down 2-0 but scored the next four goals to win 4-2. Matthew with a header for an assist on the second; he rated his play as an ‘8’.
The picture above is the first in the sequence…getting ready for a corner kick.
The ball is here…I think he just missed it…..
or if he hit it the ball went wide…because everyone here is looking to see what happened.
Matthew and Jackson heading forward after the kickoff…Matthew was up top at striker for parts of this game; had to remark to Suzanne how unusual it was to see our team’s striker passing the ball (he had two or three sweet sequences of possession and passing).
Will have to do a Sports Desk Thursday night; starting Friday Matthew had 2 soccer games and 4 lax games and Cpher has 4 lax games.
