5-1

Thursday's game was a re-play of an earlier game that got rained out- so, of course it was raining again all day. Not enough, though, to schedule a re-re-play. As the day wound down, it became evident, once again, that we would not have a full squad for the game. Having lost one player a week or so, I was able to recruit a former player to come out for the final week. But, we had a player still out with injury, two more in detention and one more who had an issue right at the end of the day that kept him from the game completely. This gave us 8 players, or one less then our last home game.

Our opponent had a full squad but most of their players were very small. Aside from a couple of players who could kick the ball a long way, they looked to be a team we could easily beat- if we had had a full squad. The start of the game was typical, the ball sailing back and forth both directions, neither team really getting anything going. It was clear to any casual observer that our team had less players, but our kids managed to get up and down the field enough to minimize the disadvantage.

Our referee was a friend of a friend who has played soccer his whole life, just never ref'd (before he ref'd our last game). The switch from player to ref is not necessarily an easy one. When I contacted him about helping us out, I told him that all he really had to do was watch off-side and throw-ins and he'd be okay.

With only 8 kids, if someone takes a break we could have serious problems. We faced such a time sometime after the first five minutes as our opponent mounted a semi-attack. They managed a decent pass across the front of the goalie's box to two guys who looked rather off-side. Our keeper charged them but their forward managed to get the ball by him and into the net. I let out an instinctive coach's cry, "Ah, he was off-side." There was a dramatic pause and then the ref (without a whistle) said, "Off-side." I was happy and a little uncomfortable all at the same time and I thought to myself, "He was off-side." and "We better win by more than one."

From that point forward, my rag-tag team did their best to fulfill my quiet wish. As I have said before, I have not figured out a way to get past my players' attitudes this year, but I also know no way to get more effort out of them- they can be amazing at times and this was one of those. With our three man disadvantage we basically sent everyone up when we attacked and everyone back when being attacked. We had three really good opportunities to score, but missed them all. Late in the first half, our best defender broke through their defense and scored his first goal of the season to make it 1-0, which remained the score into halftime.

In the second half we continued our attacks while stifling theirs. After a few minutes we got our another scoring opportunity when one of their fullbacks was called for a handball 10 yards outside of the box. Our previous goal scorer took the kick and launched a beautiful shot into the upper right hand corner of the goal to give us a 2-0 lead. The goal really took the life out of our opponent as we stayed on their side of the field for most of the remainder of the game. When they did get on our side of the field, they never really threatened to score.

With the victory we brought our season and conference record to 5-1. I would find out Friday that that secured our spot in second place in our conference's final standings. I also learned that the year end conference championship game at our local Lutheran varsity football field - which I thought was upper division champ vs. lower division champ, turned out to be upper #1 vs. #2 and lower #1 vs. #2. So, we get another shot at avenging our only loss of the season (played with 8, 9 and 10 players vs. 11). But before that comes our tournament in Neenah.