Thursday was one of my longest and most difficult days at HOPE. As the Dean of Students I work full time with the discipline issues our students need help working through. We had to send 3 students home for serious issues, 2 of which were our leading scorer and goalie from the soccer team. After working through those issues with the students, teachers and parents involved I was pretty spent emotionally with 30 minutes to go before we dismissed for the game. 15 minutes later I took a phone call from our opponent's coach letting me know the game was not at the field I originally thought it was. He immediately emailed me the directions and I printed up my new set for the parents I had already given the "wrong" directions to.
At dismissal I had seven players with me in my van, 1 sixth grader left with his mom before us and two more players were in detention who would join us at the game. Our opponent had called me a couple weeks ago to ask if we could play 8-on-8 because he was concerned about his numbers. At the time we had 14 or so kids on the roster but I was fine with playing with less. Ironically, he showed up with 12 and we had only 9 who made it to the game.
The field was a regulation side so again we had a game with a lot of dribbling through open areas and a lot of tired kids. I had an 8th grader play goalie and he was really excited about giving it a shot (and also about the Brett Favre jersey I had him wear as the makeshift keeper jersey). Unfortunately, zeal does not a great goalie make as he surrendered two goals within the first four minutes trying to figure out where he should be and how he should play. But, he (and our fullbacks) settled down and kept them out of the goal for the rest of the half. We made no real threats on their end and were down 2-0 at the break.
Due to the stress of the day I was a little less patient with our team than I would normally like to be and I did not have the luxury of having subs to give kids a break or a chance to be spoken to personally. We had our typical half time of water and encouragement and returned to the field with our typical resolve to keep fighting. So far this year we have outscored our opponents in the second half 9-2. Ten minutes in we finally broke through to pull within one goal. The official (dressed in a grey tank top and green shorts) was content to let everyone play pretty rough for middle school soccer. He called exactly zero fouls or free kicks, which got frustrating for me and all the kids. We battled with every ounce of energy we had, but were unable to get the equalizing goal. In addition to our keeper and best forward gone, our best defender never made it to the game either and we lost 2-1 to fall to 2-3 on the season.
Again, I could not have asked our kids to have worked any harder or given any more than they did. We have two weeks left in the season with 2 games and a tournament go. I really hope we are able to keep our spirits up and finish well, since it has been a good season thus far.
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