Friday, June 27, 2008

C's last soccer game

C finished his soccer season last weekend with a bang... Great to see how far he and his teammates have come. They played the same "dark blue" team that they had played their very first game, after only one, 20-minute practice in the rain.

That first game of the season they were, understandably, very disorganized and got crushed. This time there was still the extra-tall coach's son on the other team who was able to dribble around people well and move down to score. And he and others still scored several points. But C's team scored more (unofficially of course, at this level/league they don't even keep an official score and certainly don't maintain team rankings...which is great...but the kids usually know who won, and the parents do to, even though we try not to mention it around the kids :)

C's team passed a lot to each other, which was one of the things his coaches worked on all season and it really helped them in this game. And they were just better individual players too. C plays better on defense--very instinctively in fact, so much so that the coach's were surprised that it was his first time playing on a team...but he wants the thrill of being on offense. So he played goalie for one quarter so he could then be guaranteed a chance to play center the next quarter (that's how they reward goalie participation). As you'll see in this photo, passing in an obvious way to start the quarter off...(don't forget you can click for larger views of these pictures).



I found it hard to get good photos of his great defensive playing. I was usually too busy cheering him on, and with the time delay on the camera and all... Here's a blurry one of him having just kicked it up field away from an opposing player (and a pass to a girl on his team no less).



Some of the highlights of his playing were an amazing save when the other team had bypassed his goalie, and the ball was on the line right in front of the goal just waiting a little nudge by one of the players running towards it, but he flew back there and kicked it out--to the cheers of his team and us parents... He also did a backwards pass (behind him, while facing away) to a teammate who scored a goal soon thereafter, and he was also proud of kicking it between some girl's legs on the other team...

Here's one of him going up to assist goal making if necessary. I hope he gets the satisfaction of kicking it into the goal himself one of these days soon...



All in all, a great way to end his first soccer season. He's already signed up for next Fall.

-Dan

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kanami sang imo blog. Daw spaghetti.

Anonymous said...

That's cool Dan! In Spain we are not so civilised on our kids matches, of course there is scoring, clasifications, parents get violent, and being the referee can be very dangerous. But anyway you have to recognise european sports are much more thrilling.Info: on sunday Spain is gonna kick butt to Germany on the Eurocup final. Please don't tell me C is with Germany?