3-0

At the start of the season we had two games on the schedule for this past week, but one team's school never opened this year and the other game got rained out. We also lost a practice on Monday due to weather, so we had not actually played a lot of soccer since our last win. I was not really sure what to expect tonight other than difficulties and we had a few of those.

Two of our players (including our best defender) were ineligible for tonight's game and a third player was literally pulled from the team right after school when mom received a not-so-great phone call from school today. That left us with 10 players for the game. SO, nine piled in a parent's car, and my van and my wife's van (driven by my cousin who's our nanny for three days while Kate is gone). Our last player hopped in his dad's truck and left before we did, BUT we got to the game before he did.

We started the game - and played most of the first half - 11 v. 9, but you would not have known we were down 2 players the way we controlled the ball for the first 20 minutes. The downside to our crazy schedule/conference this year is that we have to drive 25+ minutes for games like this. The upside is that driving 25+ minutes pits us against some of the smaller schools with less kids (and smaller kids). Our opponent tonight could easily have passed for a U12 or U10 (without their goalie).

The field was also unlike any I have ever seen in that it had a mound right outside of the goalie box on one end that actually created a cliff with a gradual incline of a good foot or two. It made for some interesting attacks in the first half when we were going towards it. Playing down 2 players limited our offensive efficiency but we did manage to knock one through to take a 1-0 lead for the first time this year.

Right before halftime our 10th player (and one of our two leading goal scorers) showed up. At half time it was still 1-0. Our late arriving forward wasted no time in the second half making up for his absence, scoring twice in the first five minutes to push our lead to 3-0. From there I shuffled our line up a little to give some of our fullbacks an opportunity to get some shots on goal. One of our girls scored her first goal ever (and also our first goal scored this year not by our two forwards). A few other players got a LOT of good looks but missed every shot they took. I tallied somewhere near 20 shots that we put on goal.

Defensively, I gave our keeper 7 saves for the sevn balls that rolled up to his waiting arms. Not much excitement for him and our defenders, but otherwise a good moral booster for our team. Actually, a few kids are starting to get a tad bit cocky now that we are 3-0. I have tried to remind them that we have three conference games left in the next 9 days (against three schools larger than our previous opponents) and that we have not won anything yet, but there's not much you can do when you are dealing with pre-teen egos. For now though, we are enjoying the longest win streak in our school's two year history of having soccer.

2-0

This afternoon/evening was one of those games that make me wonder why I coach middle school soccer and then later reminded me why.

If you are going to coach middle school soccer in the city, you have to understand that half the battle is getting the team to the game- and tonight was a battle. During the winter our Lutheran "Super Conference" has four divisions divided by school sizes and locations. With soccer there are only two divisions, which is nice because we are in the "small" schools division- but the small schools are all from the suburbs. Tonight's game was in Brookfield, a 30 minute drive.

Of the 12 players present and eligible for tonight's game, only 4 had rides planned- one had a doctor's appointment and was to meet us at the game. Not necessarily a problem because my van can hold 6 and my wife's van 2. BUT, one player's dad thought he was supposed to pick his son up at the time the game actually started, so he ended up climbing in my van and making it a bit tight for the ride there. Not much traffic, but a lot of stoplights and stop signs- which is enough to drive me crazy driving a van full of middle schoolers wondering if we're going to be late or not.

When we arrived we had time for about 5 minutes of warm-ups, but our kids do not understand our simple two-pass-shot warm-up routine yet and our keeper put his keeper jersey on backwards and the three kids getting rides to the game were missing. 2 managed to show up and we started the game 10-on-10. (Our conference plays 20 minute halves which is really silly- I am used to 30 minute halves and 25 minutes for tournament games, when you are playing more than one game in a day.)

The first 10 minutes were full of "bee-hive" soccer. (My mom and dad coined this phrase when I played grade school soccer because it was easy to find the ball- it was surrounded by several kids moving like a bunch of bees.) A few minutes later our opponents scored the first goal on a pretty decent shot from far out that slipped over the outstretched arms of our keeper who has a particularly long wing span. We had a couple legit attacks, but could not get anything serious going and thus trailed 1-0 at half time. We switched keepers at half time to the keeper that started our last game partly because that was my plan at the start of the season and partly because he was pretty bummed about giving up the goal. This turned out to be my best coaching decision of the night.

In the second half both teams traded decent attacks with our few shots ending up off target and their few shots ending up being stopped in great and not-so-great ways by our keeper. Almost 10 minutes in though we finally broke through and our 6th grade forward scored his second goal of the season to even it up at 1-1.

The final 10 minutes were a classic middle school stalemate. A lot of tired kids kicking the ball everywhere and nowhere all at once. The game ended in a tie and the home coach opted for one 5 minute overtime (as opposed to two). Those five minutes did nothing as neither team could get even a shot off. So we needed penalty kicks (PK's) to decide the victor.

I was excited because I had prepped our keeper to understand that on penalty kicks in regulation the keeper must stay on the goal line, but in shoot out PK's the keeper can come off the line and charge the shot. So I selected our 5 shooters and sent our keeper off ready to charge the first two kicks and fake on the third. Then the referee told my keeper he cannot come off the line. That stunk, but we had a shoot-out to win.

They shot and scored their first PK and so did we. They missed their second... and so did we. They made their third, we missed our third. They missed their fourth... and so did we. Their fifth kick bounced off the top post, off our keeper's head and out. Our fifth kicker was/is probably our most even keeled kid- never gets emotional, ever. He calmly approached the ball and put it deep in the lower corner of the net to tie the PK's at 2 and send us to a second round of 3 PK's.

These 3 had to be 3 new players so now we were down to three kids who have never played soccer before. It seemed that our opponent was in the same predicament. We now shot first and hooked it left... so did they. Our second shooter (a left footer) hooked it right, they shot it over the cross bar. Our third kicker- my biggest attitudinal issue thus far this season - came through with a shot the fooled the keeper. As our keeper headed out I told our team to make sure they piled on him after he won the game for us. Turned out he did not need to be all that ready as their third player missed the goal entirely- but our kids still piled on him to celebrate our second victory in as many games this season.

The good news about winning two out of two so far is that I have been able to challenge the kids to imagine how much better we could be if we: didn't complain about laps, fight with Coach over drills, started listening to the coaching Coach does in practice. I think the kids feel good about themselves (as rightfully they should) and I would like to think they might be coming around to understanding why Coach does what he does in practice.

1-0

On the way to tonight's game, one of my players commented that last night's practice was a "perfect practice"! This was a very telling remark since yesterday all we did was scrimmage so that I could take one more chance to teach positioning and responsibilities to our players.

We had 12 eligible players (permission slip/waiver and athletic fee paid and parent meeting attended), which worked out great because our opponent (who started the year with 10 players) had only 8 in school today due to illness.

Playing 8-on-8 was a little screwy as it erases three players from the line-up and essentially did away with mid-fielders for us. Even though I had to do a lot of "reminding" about where to be and what to do, our kids seemed to have a decent idea of what they were doing.

Our "home" field is regulation size and we bought corner flags and official nets marking the first game we have ever played with a fully equipped field! It looked great. A couple stats that I would love to track - but never could since there is only me to keep stats - are time of possession of each team and time spent on each half of the field. I am sure if I could have tracked those stats we would have dominated in time of possession and time spent on our opponent's side of the field.

With 8 players we opted for a 4-1-2 formation (4 fullbacks, 1 sweeper and 2 forwards). Of course this formation morphed (at times early in the game) into a 2-1-4 (4 forwards) and I had to "remind" our center fullbacks they were not forwards.

The first moment of excitement came about half way through the first half when their forwards mounted the first of maybe only 4 attacks in the whole game. Our fullbacks met them outside of the goalie box, got tuned around somehow and passed the ball back towards our keeper. We were on the east side of the field (staring into the sun) and I thought I saw the other team kick it and told our keeper to pick it up. Oops- can't do that. So they got an indirect penalty kick just inside the goalie box. Our fullbacks actually did a good job of setting up our wall (we only talked about this once, just yesterday) but their player hit a remarkably good shot that went over our wall and just under the crossbar. Kind of a bummer but not enough to dampen our spirits- too much.

We got the equalizing goal within a few minutes on an all-out attack by our forwards, sweeper and 1 or 2 fullbacks. Halftime 1-1.

In the second half we switched keepers to see how our other keeper would do... and never got to see him even touch the ball. In fact, our two fullbacks we were keeping back to defend barely moved at all and we subbed two rotations through those positions with NO action. About midway through the second half we broke through their defense, got a good shot on goal that their keeper got to but did not wrap up. Instead the ball shot straight up, came down off his back and into the goal to give us the 2-1 lead.

The rest of the game we kept the ball on their end of the field. I think the ball only crossed the midfield line 2 or 3 times the entire half. Our kids were pretty tired and excited about the win. I believe (or at least hope) that they learned a few things:

1. Coach was right when he told them how tired they would be from all the running and thus, trust him when he asks them to run laps at practice.

2. Coach was pretty much right when he told them where to be to get to the ball and get in on the action.

I only had to deal with one bad attitude all game, otherwise I think everyone realized how much fun they were having and how much we have to learn and to improve on. Practice tomorrow and then another game Thursday, on the road. But for now, we are the first 1-0 soccer team HOPE has ever had!

Week Three

With the holiday Monday, we only had three practices this week which leaves us one practice (next Monday) before our first game. It should be very interesting.

Our three practices brought our total of players-that-have-been-to-at-least-one-practice up to 18 or so now. However, we have only been able to get 10 at the most to any practice. By the end of the week we were spending at least 30 minutes on offense v. defense. (On our fenced in lot this means setting up cones 24 ft apart in front of the chain link fence and hoping no one kicks it over the fence, but at least twice a practice it happens. Behind the fence is a miniature jungle of weeds. More fun!)

I have learned three things from our mini-scrimmages: 1. Everyone wants to play goalie 2. No one wants to be on defense 3. No one knows anything about positioning, spacing, attacking, defending, etc, etc, etc (Except for one sixth grader who continually schooled his teammates and got shots on goal almost at will!)

I really have no idea what we will look like next Tuesday other than our jerseys and field are all set. I ordered corner flags and nets (along with 6 new balls - so I don't have to pump up four of our "ghetto" balls every practice only to find them flat by the end of practice - and new goalie gloves). When the packages arrived I learned that I had ordered only 1 soccer net (who sells single soccer nets?) and that it was fit for an A-frame (who knew there were multiple kinds of soccer goals?).

This afternoon I drove out to an actual goal manufacturer (where I should have started) and bought an official net set along with some velcro to keep the nets up and take them down easily (since we will be playing our "home" games at a city park this year).

I am confident that I know I have two forwards picked out and that I have two 8th graders I plan on playing one half each until one shows he deserves the spot. The rest of the line-up will be up for grabs by the kids who... A) show up and B) show me they want the spot.

This week was a real struggle for me since I spent all day (as a dean of students for K4-2nd and 6th-8th grade students) working with upset kids and then my soccer team (made up of many of the same kids along with kids who have never played soccer or been on a team) is not sure they want to run my drills and function as a team. This season may be my most challenging yet... the adventure takes a new turn next Tuesday..!

We are still in need of a little financial support. Any gift (of any size) you will receive a team picture. Any gift $50+ and you will get a team t-shirt.

Week Two

Monday... Only 7 players showed up today, 2 of which were new. We had a good work out, though. Pretty much all of the students I talked to about not coming told me transportation (or lack thereof) was the reason they missed practice. This is reason #58 for why coaching middle school sports can be frustrating and reason #142 for why coaching middle school sports in the city can be frustrating. (Actually, it would be top 5 in both...)

Right now the tension in practice has been between getting kids excited about soccer and also setting standards for how our team will and won't be run. When a player comes and walks during our warm-up jog and then walks through drills without even attempting the drill I am inclined to ask them to head home and try again tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll be able to encourage/keep enough kids committed to the team to actually have a team.


Tuesday... Got confirmation of the fields we were hoping to rent for our three "home games" this year - also have our refs lined up too. (Last year I actually had to ref two games - in my work clothes and shoes - when the home teams failed to get refs.) Now we need to order nets and corner flags ($$$).

In practice today, I decided (with two weeks to go before our first game) that I should start to see who could be our Goalie. On one end of our field we have an iron fence and on the other we have chain-link. The chain link fence has an empty city block corner with bushes and the iron fence has a main street, so we set up cones in front of the chain link fence (in case balls missed their mark). I gave two 8th graders a shot at goal, mostly because they are our tallest players and have long arms. Neither has ever played Goalie, but both showed some decent ability and used their length well. I'll probably use both guys in every game (one half each) until one of them demonstrates that he is the better choice.

Only seven players made it to practice. We picked up a couple new players but also lost a couple.
Wednesday... Eight players in practice today. Another new player, but also another player gone. Several players have been absent from practice this week because of transportation issues. Very frustrating because there's not much I can do to help with that situation.

During our shooting drills today more kids wanted to try out being Goalie - I think it was because I brought the Goalie gloves to practice. I let one guy (besides the two from yesterday) try it out. Though only a 6th grader, he did pretty well. I probably won't let him play Goalie, since he's our most experienced player and we need him scoring goals, not stopping them.

The number of players is a small concern to me right now. I won't be really worried until this time next week if we are still only getting 7-9 kids (or worse) to practice. We have 5 more practices before our first game and a lot to introduce and learn.

Thursday... Eleven players showed up at practice today- again a mixture of a couple new players and others not showing. I think we have now had 16-17 different players show up at at least one practice. We would be set if they all came at the same time, but it looks like we will be hovering around 11 all year.

Last year we were fortunate enought to have a handful of players that either had minimal soccer experience or were pretty good athletes. This year we have less that fit that category, but where they lack in those areas they make up for it in their desire to learn a new sport.

We don't practice on Fridays and Monday is a holiday so we now have only 4 practices before our first game. Oh boy!