Charles’ team won 1-0! Charles was very happy about this, “we finally won a game today!”. I think the team played better, as the other team didn’t seem to be much worse than any of the other teams they’ve played. They had two good older kids this time, plus one of the girls who is usually there did much better, and Charles had a good game, what little he played.
At first the team struggled with goal defense with Charles as goalie, but by about half way through the first quarter the opponents were just not bringing the ball over. I had a hard time getting a good action shot of Charles because he played goalie the first quarter, then defense, and basically didn’t do anything because the ball didn’t come over. One of the few times the other team got a drive started, Charles popped out in front and kicked the ball right back. That was it for Charles action in the second quarter.
The other team did do a lot of face blocking. It started with one girl getting a ball square in the cheek from a good kick. She had to be carried off the field in tears. Then another boy managed to get a ball in the face three times that I saw. He either didn’t get hit as hard or had a higher pain threshold, as he just shook them off. The first girl managed to get another face ball as well, which she shook off too, so maybe the first hit was just particularly hard.
Charles did play a bit of offense in the third quarter, but got taken out for the last quarter because we had a lot of players and he’d played all three of the first three quarters. We even loaned the other side one of ours early on to get more kids on the field. It was the case, though, that after Charles was out the other side did a lot better at getting the ball on the other side of the field. Obviously it was the lack of Charles that enervated the defense. That’s my view, completely impervious to facts.
Jack and his mom dropped by during the game because Anwen was playing on the adjacent field. Jack mocked the poor playing skills of Charles’ team and its opponent. I pointed out that he and Corwin hadn’t played much better at that age, with Jack’s mom offering “and we have photographic proof!” to drive the point home. The kids are just starting to play positions other than goalie / non-goalie, which I think is about the age (1st grade) that Corwin did as well. Maybe we should make Jack be an assistant coach to the team for a while. Heh.
Charles’ big first half play
Even though the boys had games at different times, Corwin’s was over at the soccer fields at the (almost literally) other corner of town. Mom got him and Alice there on time, and I followed as soon as Charles was done with his game. I didn’t see the beginning, which contained both scored goals, one for each. Nobody scored while I was there, leaving the result as a 1-1 tie.
The game seemed very even, with lots of shots at both goals, until the near the end, when I think our guys were tiring out and the other team started to dominate in field position, with more shots at our goal and really not any at theirs. Still, Corwin’s team held out until the final whistle. There were lots of good plays, and even some passing, although Josh tended to rely on his fancy footwork more (either because he thought it worked better, or he just like teasing the opposing players). Both goalies had to make a lot of desperate saves, and Corwin even got some action in breaking up plays and chasing after attacking players. I did notice that the boys seemed to coordinate better in that situations, often splitting up so that one defender stayed on the heals of the attacker to prevent him from having time to set up a shot, while the other broke toward the goal to help block the shot. The offense wasn’t quite as coordinated, especially near the end of the game. Some of the passing might have been inhibited by the thick defense the other team had. Maybe. Still, (for example) the opponents would frequently triple team Josh when he made a drive down the side. On the fourth hand, the coach’s work on getting them to spread out on offense was only semi-effective. Defense had some bunching problems but not as much. Overall, I would judge the level of play to be noticeably better than in Charles’ game.
Corwin’s team did suffer a couple of injuries which may have affected the end game. Both Patrick’s were knocked out of the game on injuries. The first landed badly while playing goal and had to be carried off. The other Patrick cornered too tightly and twisted his ankle a bit, but stayed in the game until he got kicked in that same ankle a little while later on another play, which took him out. Both are good players so their loss probably had a noticeable effect.
Corwin’s preferred image