I must say that I did expect our team to win our first match. However, I wasn’t so sure about our second match against the YMCA team. And I certainly didn’t expect us to dominate the match with such ease. But remember last season’s posts on “how big” some of the other kids were compared to our team? Well, in less than a year, Lorenzo, Hunter and Rylan have become “The Big Kids” on the field. Expected, yet astonishing!
We have been rotating the “three captains” among the goal-keeping, mid-field (controls the team’s tempo and team’s offense) and sweeper (organizes the defense) positions. And it seems to be working well and producing a well-balanced team. For this match, while rotating Rylan and Hunter at goal, we kept Lorenzo at mid-field for the entire first half. They didn’t disappoint us, and Lorenzo scored four very nice goals in the first 20 minutes of play. The “Y” did pull one back on a fast counter attack, but Rylan danced around two defenders and scored a fantastic goal just before half time — Green 5 x 1 Blue.
With a big lead secured, we placed Lorenzo at goal, and asked Rylan to go back to the sweeper position (he’s our best defender); thus, taking a more defensive stance for the second half. This gave us the opportunity to move the younger kids around, and a chance to figure out which positions better fit their skills. For instance, the Hunter-Cole-Noel trio up-front generated some extremely fast counter attacks – Hunter had at least four great chances at goal with this combo. On the other hand, Ben, Jack, and James seem to play better at the defensive-end, especially with Rylan close-by to guide them.
In the end, Hunter scored one more goal, and Lorenzo and our defense held their grounds. Final score: Green 6 x 1 Blue.
PS: I forgot to mention the kids have decided to call the team THE GLADIATORS.
Lorenzo actually pushed for “The Fighting Irish”, but references to Notredame didn’t quite fly at “Dawg Nation.” As background, “The Fighting Irish” was Lorenzo’s very first soccer team — all players were from St. Joseph Catholic School. He has been nominating “The Fighting Irish” ever since… 
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.
You must log in to post a comment.