The season is over.
Happy day, I can finally move this pile of dirty soccer cleats from my entryway… at least for a couple of months.
We had a remarkable soccer season this year. Ryan and Katie were both able to play in the 10-12 division of CYS soccer on base and were consequently picked for the same team after the coach’s draft meeting. Their coach was amazing and the whole team loved him… especially my kids. Yes, it was Chris. Chris is a natural born Coach. He LOVES soccer, he LOVES coaching, and he LOVES that his kids are just as excited about this sport as he is. This is the first season in a LONG time that Chris has actually been the head coach – but Chris’ schedule here allows him the flexibility and time for practices and Saturday games. He was in heaven. They practiced every Monday and Wednesday from 5:00 – 6:00 with quite a few 4:30 starts whenever Chris could manage it. Stretches with cadences, ‘suicides’, and all kinds of drills that had the players asking if they could do them over and over. At the end of their UNDEFEATED season the players and parents gave Chris a ‘team ball’ with all their signatures and lots of praise. He did a fabulous job. Here are his thoughts on his favorite players…
| “As Ryan’s coach, I loved finally having him play in a league that plays the full field with complete rules. With the normal 11 players per side, I was able to institute a 4-4-2 formation (4 defenders, 4 midfielders, and 2 strikers). Although Ryan has usually played offense in previous seasons, I decided he would be the perfect player to field the Stopper position. This is the middle/forward defender. He played the role very well. I had him push up quite a bit on offense and he was usually there to turn back the other teams offense before they were really able to get anything going. But I could also trust him to hustle back and support the other defenders whenever he needed to. The way we played it pretty much kept the ball on the other teams side of the field all game, and resulted in a lot of blowouts. Because of his position, he didn’t score as many goals as he wanted to, but he was a big key to our success. This was Katie’s first season of actual soccer. She is so small and petite and still working on her coordination and kicking, but what she did bring to the team was speed and determination. I think other teams would describe her as annoying, because the bigger and more skilled players thought they could get past her, but she was surprisingly stout on defense and if she did get beat, she could recover fast enough to annoy them again. She played left defender most of the time, but loved it when I would put her in at midfield. She did great for her first season and had a great time.” |
Emily’s first season, which I posted about previously, ended the same day and all three have new trophies on their shelves. Our Mondays and Wednesdays shall be wonderfully empty now… well, actually, not at all empty… family home evening, homework, piano practicing, a sit down dinner at a reasonable hour, reading time and a sensible bedtime. Sounds fabulous.