Monday, November 27, 2006
Turkey Tournament
My oldest daughter was asked to play on a soccer tournament team and we had our games this past weekend. Other than the rain, cold, mud and wind, we had a fabulous time! Being able to coach and watch these young ladies play soccer at such a high level was extremely satisfying.
During the normal AYSO soccer season, the teams are pretty well divided with the talent evenly distributed amongst the teams. When the season is over, there's a tournament held in San Bruno every year that allows you to submit your own hand picked team. The head coach, took his core team (they actually won the league this year) and added 4 players to his roster.
Let's just say, its nice watching the game knowing you have a good finisher/striker as a forward. During the season, we lost a bunch of games 1 - 0, so, you kinda get used to not seeing many goals. Our first game on Saturday we quickly came out with guns blazing and scored 4 goals. We ended up winning 4 - 1. Our second game later on that afternoon was against Pacifica RipTides. We knew we were in trouble when we saw they had matching warm up sweats with gear bags with their names on it. A telling sign of a Club soccer team.
We didn't allow that to bother us, and put up a really good fight, ultimately losing, 2-0. We figured we'd see them again for the finals if we made it that far.
Our 3rd game was early Sunday morning and if we won this game, we'd continue playing the rest of the day. It was a see-saw battle back and forth, but at the end, we won it 2-1. We made it to the semi-finals. Our 4th game ended up being our closest match. We just couldn't muster enough offense to put the ball in the back of the goal. The game ended in a 0 -0 tie. Since there had to be a winner, the match came down to penalty kicks. Each team is allowed 5 shots on goal from the top of the penalty box. We won the shootout 4-3, so we made it to the finals.
Our final game was against the Pacifica team (we knew we'd see them again,) unfortunately, the weather was not cooperating. It started raining pretty hard by midday and with a 3 o'clock start time, the field was pretty trashed. The grass was long, muddy and slippery. But the girls didn't seem to mind it, in fact, they were having a good time laughing and playing in the rain. I think us coaches were pretty miserable in the rain, I was having flash back memories to my CIM marathon I ran back in 2002 when it was raining sideways! This time though, I had a jacket and hat on.
The Riptide team was obviously a lot better than ours, but our girls never gave up, we ended up losing 2-0, but finished in second place. We were very proud of the girls! So, 5 games in 2 days, not a bad way to spend the weekend.
During the normal AYSO soccer season, the teams are pretty well divided with the talent evenly distributed amongst the teams. When the season is over, there's a tournament held in San Bruno every year that allows you to submit your own hand picked team. The head coach, took his core team (they actually won the league this year) and added 4 players to his roster.
Let's just say, its nice watching the game knowing you have a good finisher/striker as a forward. During the season, we lost a bunch of games 1 - 0, so, you kinda get used to not seeing many goals. Our first game on Saturday we quickly came out with guns blazing and scored 4 goals. We ended up winning 4 - 1. Our second game later on that afternoon was against Pacifica RipTides. We knew we were in trouble when we saw they had matching warm up sweats with gear bags with their names on it. A telling sign of a Club soccer team.
We didn't allow that to bother us, and put up a really good fight, ultimately losing, 2-0. We figured we'd see them again for the finals if we made it that far.
Our 3rd game was early Sunday morning and if we won this game, we'd continue playing the rest of the day. It was a see-saw battle back and forth, but at the end, we won it 2-1. We made it to the semi-finals. Our 4th game ended up being our closest match. We just couldn't muster enough offense to put the ball in the back of the goal. The game ended in a 0 -0 tie. Since there had to be a winner, the match came down to penalty kicks. Each team is allowed 5 shots on goal from the top of the penalty box. We won the shootout 4-3, so we made it to the finals.
Our final game was against the Pacifica team (we knew we'd see them again,) unfortunately, the weather was not cooperating. It started raining pretty hard by midday and with a 3 o'clock start time, the field was pretty trashed. The grass was long, muddy and slippery. But the girls didn't seem to mind it, in fact, they were having a good time laughing and playing in the rain. I think us coaches were pretty miserable in the rain, I was having flash back memories to my CIM marathon I ran back in 2002 when it was raining sideways! This time though, I had a jacket and hat on.
The Riptide team was obviously a lot better than ours, but our girls never gave up, we ended up losing 2-0, but finished in second place. We were very proud of the girls! So, 5 games in 2 days, not a bad way to spend the weekend.
