Several people have asked about this already, so I figured it would be a good idea to post some stuff about Justin’s soccer tourney from this weekend.
First, the background: the season has not officially started. This is a preseason tourney that lies outside the normal ‘play-off’ type of thing. Any competitive team is invited.
Fact 1: Littleton United fields four competitive teams, ranked A to D.
Fact 2: Justin is on the D team, which we’re happy with since (a) he’s never played anything but Rec league before and (b) he hasn’t played AT ALL for almost 18 months. Many kids didn’t make the teams at all, and he did. The coach thinks he’ll improve by leaps and bounds. Honestly, he already has.
Fact 3: Justin’s team was the only Littleton United team to take part in the tournament. They’ve only had ONE WEEK of practice together, and I’m fairly certain the other teams didn’t participate because they thought they’d lose. Our coach wanted the kids to get out and play when it didn’t really matter, and I think that was a great idea. I have a great deal of respect for this guy: the kids like him, he works them hard, he doesn’t think he’s a fantastic coach, and he’s managed to beat the C-Team in the Finals for two years running.
Fact 4: Because this is an ‘open’ tournament, it is un-tiered; anyone might end up playing anyone — a d-team might end up playing an existing team of state champions. Them’s the breaks.
Fact 5: I’m very impressed with how polite and supportive MOST of the parents on the teams are at this level. I was a Field Referee for two seasons for the Rec League, and the parents were sometimes awful.
The results:
Saturday, there were two games.
Game 1: Versus Pueblo’s A-team. This was the first thing the team had done besides practice together, ever (only about half the team returned from last year, because the coaches best players from last year have moved up to the ‘higher’ ranks). Justin was told he would not be playing goalie (and he hadn’t practiced that at all during the week — other kids had).
Oops: he played the whole second half as goalie — first time in 18 months.
Result: 8 to 1. Four goals got by Justin — one was his, one was a defensive player’s screwup, and two just simply went over his head too high — that happens a lot when the net is set for high school and you’re eleven. Not too bad. The first half was chaos as the kids tried to remember how this stuff worked - they played pretty well the second half.
Game Two: 12:30 in the afternoon the same day, playing the Colorado Rush team (the guys that recruit the players off of A-teams in their area to form ‘independent’ teams) they win the play-offs a lot, and this was their first game in the Tourney, so they were fresh. Justin was put in the net again in the second half. At least it wasn’t a surprise this time, but it looked ugly.
Result: Looks were not deceiving. 10 - 0. (Another even split between the two goalies, so at least he wasn’t doing any worse than anyone else, and the veteran parents all seem pleasantly surprised at how well he’s doing for his first Competitive games.) The coaches had words after the game, which also got ugly: you see, you get the same points whether the score is 10-0 or 1-0 — a shut-out is a shut-out. Running up the score in a tourney like this is just… pointless.
Third game: Sunday morning at nine.
Pre-game entertainment: We got to watch the Rush team from the day before get beat 3-2 on our field in the game just before ours. The winning goal was from a penalty kick that the other team had been given due to a technical foul the coach had ‘earned’ for his team. Karma is sweet, sometimes.
Info: We were playing a team that was at about our level of play who was also on their third game. Justin was in the net for the whole game this time.
Result: A nail-biting 1-0 in favor of the other team. We had over a dozen shots on the net that missed by less than a foot. The only shot that got by Justin was two minutes into the game: a grass-burner into the far right corner of the twenty foot net from a guy on the left side. Justin just couldn’t catch it in time, but even then it was close. During the rest of the game he had a number of great saves, and the team played a hundred times better than the day before. The coach looked fit to burst, he was so pleased, and the kids were playing all-out right to the final whistle.
This weekend, another tournament. Something tells me Justin might be getting some net-work during practice.
