Off To A Good Start

Our first game of the year tonight was against our closest and "fiercest" rival. When I first got hired at HOPE and started coaching, my principal told me that all I had to do was beat this school. We have played twice in basketball (both of which we won) and once in soccer two years ago (which we also won). Tonight, we kept our streak in tact.

But first we had a small scare with our uniforms. Earlier last month I had numbers screen printed on the back of our jerseys and the turn-around was so quick that I thought we might have enough time (if the funds came in) to get our school name screen printed on the front. When we had several generous donations come in, I took the jerseys in and was told they would be ready two days before our game. Having not heard from the company yesterday, I called to ask how they were doing. A salesperson fielded my call, put me on hold a couple times, then assured me they were in production, then asked what time the game started the following day, then assured me they would be done by Noon today. To their credit, they had them done by 10am, so I was able to step out of school briefly to pick them up without any fanfare.

After two and a half weeks of practice I felt so-so about how we would look as a team. We have pretty much figured out how to get the whole team to a local park once a week for a practice on a full field and we ran through situations (ie. kick-offs, goal kicks, corner kicks and free kicks) once- so we were about as ready as we could be for such an early contest.

Upon greeting the other team's coach I quickly learned that their 7th and 8th graders were not present due to a school camping trip they do every fall. (This would explain why their team looked MUCH smaller than ours.) Needless to say, I was a tad less excited about what I would learn from the contest.

After needing to restart the opening kick-off three times before it was done correctly, we wasted no time in scoring our first goal just 37 seconds into our young season. Our second goal followed the first just over a minute later. We then needed nearly three more minutes to score our third goal, after which I subbed out our two primary goal scorers.

This sub slowed our offense down enough to limit us to just one goal over the last 15 or so minutes of the first half. Though our defense never let our opponents even get the ball near the goalie's box, let alone near the goal.

In the second half I moved some of our lines around and left our best players next to me as our younger kids got a chance to do a lot of running. Late in the second half we snuck one more goal past their keeper to give us the final margin of 5-0.

Overall, our defense was great as our goalie never even touched the ball. Our spacing was pretty good as I got a small picture of who will get the most minutes on defense. Our main half back was pretty good in covering the field left-to-right and north-and-south.

The kids were pretty jazzed as were the numerous teachers and students who made it to the game. I might get around to telling them they beat 5th and 6th graders if they come to school tomorrow talking smack. Either way, we start of our second consecutive season with a win.