Footie: Game Eight

[przed]

I skipped over game seven last week because, well, there was no game seven. The club cancelled all the games at the last minute because rain during the day had turned a lot of the fields into swampy messes. But not only was our field fine, but it had stopped raining and turned into a lovely night. So, since we had almost all of our players, we had a bit of a practice instead. It was a good chance to give the kids a shot at playing positions.

Today we tested out the whole positions thing during a real game. Which was utterly terrifying. The kids were game, but we had defenders who kept trying to be attackers, attackers who could have been a tad more aggressive, a first half, first-time goalkeeper who was a bit unclear on how things worked, an unusual number of hand balls, and a brief blip in the second half when it seemed like our entire team forgot which way they were meant to be going. But in spite of the teething pains, and in spite of playing a team that had three of our best players from last year, we managed to pull off a 4 - 2 win.

Ros struggled a bit during the first half, but she was our goalkeeper in the second half and she totally rocked. None of the other team came close to scoring on her. She's definitely one of our best in goal.

Apart from whole position thing, the one thing we apparently need to work on is being a tad over-aggressive. We got a lot of free kicks called on us tonight. A lot. Like, more than I've ever seen before in a game. My fellow coach and I don't want our kids to turn into that team, so I think we'll be having a little chat about sportmanship before our next game.

Comments

[sc-fossil.livejournal.com]

It's a lot of work, isn't it? You're doing a great job with those kids.

[przed.livejournal.com]

It's a lot of work, but at least it's (mostly) fun. The hardest part is trying to do some skill development with only a fifteen minute practice before the games. Mind you, it's also nice to only have one night a week taken up by soccer, not the two you'd get if there was a dedicated practice night.