Championship Game Recap

Hi Team, Thursday's victory marked three consecutive wins for our boys! That is a new first for our team and very well deserved. We discuss personal goals for each match and mine was for us to score within the first few minutes of play to set the tone--I didn't tell the kids this but Nick must have sensed it and took control from the left flank to score at about the 50 second mark! This helped put the opponents on their heels--last meeting you may recall the Infinity girls scored first and we played catch up to tie the match at 2 a piece. A short while later Tate gave us some breathing room with a fantastic sprint up the right flank which he finished with an absolute rocket of a shot over the keeper!! We kept up the pressure and did some amazing passing in front of their net. Logan had a nice left footed cross and Ethan broke free from the right and drilled a hard ball into the keeper's gut, that I thought might knock her into the net! A bit later one of our kids (probably a blonde) slotted a beautiful through ball from the center of the 18 where Ethan gathered the pass, took three touches and placed the ball perfectly in the net--but the linesman's flag was up indicating he was in an offsides position. So no goal, but the orchestration of those passes and the clean finish were fantastic! You don't see that in rec ball. Maybe next year we can have someone capture the games on video so we can review these fantastic plays with the kids--as well as go over situations where we need to improve. I also want to see a replay of the somersault throw-in by the coaches' daughter--those are lovely, and we handled her throws into our goal box nicely--still, keep an eye in the papers for Oakley Rasmussen. They managed a score late in the first half with a cross leading to a one on one against Isaac who told me later that he needed to come off his line next time--yup! He got some revenge playing in the field in the second half and blasted a ball into one of the girl's head, which Nick can attest really hurts (an unannounced shot during practice by the former struck the latter in the side of the head). Second half turned out to be a game of possession and we did a great job keeping hold of the ball--when the girls disposessed us (that's an official soccer term) they moved the ball into dangerous territory but Nick did a clean job as keeper second half and we avoided any overtimes / PK shootouts as time was finally called, signaling the Wolverines as the undisputed champions of our 4-team tournament, or "top of the bottom" as I like to say! ( which is better than "bottom of the top", which happened to Infinity boys with three straight losses by large margins. ) I've pasted the bracket results into this email--we finished with a perfect "9" with 3 points for each win. In fact, no other teams in our U9 league did this because the referees let the Aggie-JL vs. Sport Logan game end in a 2:2 tie, awarding the Aggies one point for a tie for a total of 7 points in their tournament--I'll be sure to let Aggie Coach Justin know that we finished ahead of him ;-) Way to go Wolverines!! Looking forward to watching RSL play FC Dallas in the comfort of the Newman's home on this rainy Saturday--the kids earned this party for all the great drop passes this season. I'm glad we decided not to watch it live on this wet occasion--See you soon!