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!