They are all volunteers. Most of them volunteer because they have a kid on the team. The rest are a mix of folks that live in our community and want to give back to the game. There are also some high school agre kids that coach younger kids. The fact that they are volunteers made it even cooler that so many showed up to the sessions last week
Ours are volunteers too so we struggle to even get most them to do the minimum beyond training once a week and a game on Sundays. Very cool that you had so many show up just to learn.
Had 1st games for all of my teams and 2nd game for my HS girls this weekend. Lots of optimism for the season-: 4th grade girls won 7-3 and score could have easily been at least 10, had I not put a scoring restriction on 2 girls. The other teams defense was porous and got sucked to the ball and left the player on the opposite side unmarked. My girls hit the pass every time and the backside player had an open look at goal. HS girls-2 clean sheets and 2 amazing goals. One girl hit an Olympico- when I talked with her today she said, she has been trying them in HS practice and she just wanted to see what happened. Today a girl had a free kick from 40 yards out and she blasted it towards goal. It bounced just a hard off the line and keeper couldn't do anything as it bounced over her head. 1st grade girls-- this team is adorable and a blast. We play 4v4 and the other team had a tank that could just dribble through us. I can say on most of our goals, every player touched the ball before it went in the net vs their tank just dribbling. It was a great weekend.
My 6Us had our first game after getting rained out last weekend. We play 2v2 on half fields with each team's coach running a game so it's 4:1 player:ball instead of 8:1 like it would be playing 4v4. That means lots of goals for new players. I think 6 of my 7 players scored goals. My daughter claimed 9 herself. Her grandpa was more proud of her several "almost assists".
I went and watched my high school team play another school that has 7 of my 19U club boys last night. Club boys won 2-0, and it was good to see them back on the field. My school team stinks. You can really tell which team had players playing spring soccer. Most of my 19U boys' school teams are having great seasons. Two schools are conference champs and sitting on one loss each heading into sectionals. The others' teams started slow but have gotten some wins in the last couple weeks. Sectionals start next week. The best time of year!
So total brag moment. My club gave me their "Community Impact" award tonight and when they were giving it to me tonight announced that I'm the newest member of their Hall of Fame. The club has been around since 1971 and there are only 43 other members of the Hall of Fame. I'm beyond stunned
Sunday was my 6Us' last game of the season. It was a fun 9 weeks, but I'm ready to get back to "real" soccer with my 19U spring team. This was my daughter's 4th season playing. She has one more season of 2v2 before she moves up to the 8U 4v4 league next spring. She's making lots of progress. I think her ball control and game IQ are really good for this stage. Needs to improve her ball striking power and her hunger to win the ball back. It will be fun to see how she grows over the next few years and whether she wants to play competitively or not. And with the soccer season ending, we went straight into gymnastics last night...
Season is over for my 4th graders. It was another great season and it was fun to watch how they grew. The results went our way too-- while the league does public reports standings in 4th grade, we report scores and the league does privately standings. We had too many 4+ goal blowouts to stay in our current division so we will hopefully move up a division in the spring. (at 4th grade this fall there were 4 divisions and we were in the lowest).
I'm pretty excited for my spring 19U boys' season. We actually have enough players interested to form a second team this year. So we're planning on doing our usual 19U team and a second team as 17Us that we're going to treat like our JV team. This is my final season coaching the high school boys so I'm excited that we've grown the program to this point. This will be our 6th year with this team as part of our program, and it feels like we're finally at the point where it's almost self-sustaining.
Season is over for my HS girls. Our club does a post-season tournament. This year is was 2 group stage games (4-3 win and 5-0 win) and a knockout round. They won their semi-final 1-0 and the final 3-0. I think this is the 1st time I've had a team win their HS Cup division. Semi-final was interesting. Our regular goalie wanted some field time so we put her in the field for the 1st part of the half, with the understanding that we'd move her back to goal for the last 5 minutes in case the game went to penalties. When we got the the last 5 minutes, we moved her back to goal. The thing was we'd screwed up slightly and she was still on the field so she needed a minute to toss on her gloves and a pinnie. The other coach was livid and accused us of time-wasting. When we did the handshake line, instead of saying "good game", he said "this is crap." Any thoughts on the play? It was a nice way to end the season