First Soccer Game Report

Well, we had our first two soccer games this last weekend, and I’m afraid to say they didn’t go as well as I had hoped.  The Eagles did not soar.  In fact, after seeing the size of the other teams, I think we should be renamed the “Eaglets” or maybe the “Fledglings”.  At least that’s the thought I had when I watched them take our team of four and five year olds and feed them to first graders.

Griffin played goalie for most of the game, and did a fairly decent job of protecting his charge.  That’s not to say he didn’t have a few glaring errors, but when you factor in that we spent the entire game on defense, he did alright.  I did not keep track of the scores for either game.  Suffice it to say that in both cases it was ‘a whole lot of points’ to ‘zero’.

For most of the first game, I lamented that our offense never pushed into enemy territory.  Were it not for the fact that we change sides after the second period, our players might not have seen the other half of the field.  This is not how I thought things would go.  I had expected that the ref would put the ball down, blow the whistle, and it would be a mob of children surrounding the ball and barely moving it one way or the other.  In reality, the other team consistently took the ball from us and we chased them all the way to our goal. 

That’s not to say that there weren’t a few bright spots in the games.  Somewhere in the fourth period we managed to get the ball and push it past mid-field.  Then during our second game we pushed it past mid-field two more times.  You would have thought we won the game the way parents reacted.  We also had one incredible block by our youngest player.  She was helping defend the goal when one of the first graders launched a vicious kick toward the net.  Using her head, she knocked the ball away, and Griffin jumped on it.  Had it been intentional, that would have been awesome.  But when I say she used her head, it would be more precise to say she used her face, and by ‘used’ I more accurately mean that she had it in the wrong place when the ball came screaming in.  There was much crying.

Even though they lost both games, I know that Griffin had fun playing.  I think all the kids on the field had a good time, and I know the ones on the bench were having a blast running around and using the wooden surface as a balancing beam.

Sadly, I wasn’t approached by any scouts from Gatorade or Nike, but it’s still pretty early in the season.  With the direction things are heading, I imagine Griffin will put up a record number of saves this year, and that has to get the attention of some sort of sponsorship.