Our Fall soccer season ended this past weekend. It was culminated by us hosting the Kohl's Cup Rec tournament for SE Louisiana.We had 70 teams and a full 2 days of games. Ages 12 and under. The Kohl's folk said that we had over 2k in attendance on Saturday. Geez, premier NCAA varsity games don't get numbers like that.
After 2/week practices since Sept and games on Sat, I can catch my breath a little.
My little team didn't fair well. We had some close ones but we were outplayed by some stealth development teams.
I registered them early in a coed division and the state association split to boys and girls and then split my team into 2 and left them in the boys. We were 'out-division-ed'.
Then I got busy with tourney preparations and didn't get a chance to place the teams in a more suitable division.
But the kids played real hard. By the splitting, we only had one sub per team. Some of the kids played a few extra games by subbing on one of our other teams who had a roster shortage and they had fun, which is what we wanted to do.
We also played a 'friendly' on Sunday with a team from Hammond and it poured in the 2nd half but hey survived and had fun.
I striped a bunch of fields and I am becoming the field painter. It takes about 15-20 minutes to do a field. I like it. It is like a zazen meditation. Just keeping walking the lines and focus. The only sound is the splish sound of the paint can.
We convert our fields to HS mode now as we provide space for HS games and tourneys.
We start back at the end of Jan for the Spring Season. They are all coming back.
As far as the regular season, they were very good. Actually, they rocked.
Winter Indoor Season begins Sunday and will end when we begin the Spring season., I have a few kids playing but I am just going to spectate. They have been placed with a pretty good coach from Hammond. A few of them will be playing 'up' in division for the experience. Real nice facility and it will be like heaven on earth to the kids playing there. Speed turf, scoreboards and hopefully good refs.
Our son has taken to playing a lot of basketball at school at recess. He thinks that he is 'all pro' for an 8 yr old. He moves around the house with a phantom ball and his visualization stuff looks real good. But if you put a ball in his hands, it diminishes.
So...a nice opportunity came up for him next week during school vacation. He is going to a basketball camp for 3 mornings and it is being held by Jaeson Maravich. He was the oldest son of Pete. He will conduct the camp and his boy is attending also. So if anyone can 'teach' our kid something, I am sure he will. His mom still lives around the corner from us where they lived as a family and raised their kids. The backboard is still in the driveway. Nice folks.
Here is a pic from the Kohl's. We were rolling here against a very good team from Mandeville. This is is my winger and midfielder on an attack. They are even in step. 🙂
I like it because they have their heads up and are controlling the ball. That is all a coach could ask for of 7 and 8 yr old kids.
Brings back some memories for sure, my wife got tapped to coach a team of 4 and 5 year olds when our daughter was that age. We had two Hispanic boys, one Indian girl (dot Indian, not whoo whoo Indian) and a bunch of little redneck larvae on the team, guess who were the standouts (and probably the only ones who actually knew anything about the game).
She didn't really know the first thing about either soccer or coaching, but nobody else wanted that age group and our daughter wanted to play, so Mom to the rescue.
The big surprise was when they played their first and only tournament against other areas in our county, ended up winning 4 out of 5 and lost the final game 6-4. She had to sit down on the ground so they could dump the water cooler on her, think she had more fun that weekend then the kids.
You do great work, and never, never underestimate the value of your efforts, or forget it. Your kids never will.
