Sadie was mad at me for signing her up for soccer. She had said she didn’t want to do it. But she always has fun when she plays, and
she’s pretty good! So I signed her up anyway. Plus, she had quite a few friends playing and
I knew she would have fun. She did have
fun. And she is pretty good. But she still told me she never wants to do
soccer again. I’m not going to force
it. She likes basketball and that’s fine
with me. (Of course after the deadline for Fall passed, she told me she did
actually want to play…)
Kylee was with her same team she knows and loves. They were undefeated other than that one
championship game in Pocatello where they were runner-up. They dominated this year. And last year too. I love watching them play! And they are good friends too.
The season ended at the beginning of June, but they played in two tournaments in June so they kept practicing quite often, then had tournament games for three days straight the second and fourth weekend in June. They won both tournaments! The toughest team were the Knights, which is the other Idaho Falls team that has girls from our neighborhood (Jerzey and Willow) and some from school too. We’ve always beat them the last couple years every time we played. Usually it isn’t even that close of a game. But they stepped it up or maybe got new players, I’m not sure. But they gave us quite a run during these tournaments. In the end, we played a Twin team in the final game in Rexburg. It was kind of funny, Jen and I ran the Palisades trail that morning with some friends and then rushed to Rexburg to catch the last of the game (the plan was to see the whole game but I overslept by 45 minutes…) So I just changed clothes and splashed water on my face and ran out the door. When they won that game, they only had a couple of hours to kill before the next game so nobody wanted to drive back to Idaho Falls. So we hung out in Rexburg eating lunch and playing at Fat Cats until the next game. I was thinking the final game was later that evening so I didn’t realize I would be in the position to stay all day in Rexburg. But oh well. The first time we played Twin the day before, it was a tough game. There were a few questionable calls and the Twin parents were really loud and argumentative. But the Final game we beat them quite easily. It was nice. That way the Twin parents can’t complain that it was all bad calls and that’s why we won.
The next tournament was in Idaho Falls. And we played the Knights again. We tied them.
We beat the other two team easily.
So then we played the Knights in the Final. It was a tough game! (I actually wasn’t there because I was in
Boise for my Spartan, but I heard all about it!) They were tied at the end and went to a shoot
out. Kylee scored one of the goals in
the shootout and we got to three first so we won (I think that’s how it
went). Kylee has been playing mid more
lately and she’s doing well. She still
plays defender a lot as well though. The
Knights have some really fast forwards that our defense has a hard time keeping
up with. Brooklyn is the only one fast
enough, so she was doing more defense.
Anyway, two championship wins for us!
This picture cracked me up, the two teams together. The Knights obviously disappointed and
Thunder just happy.
They also had soccer tryouts for Kylee’s age in June. They have a Premiere club team, a Select club
team, and then I think another club team if there are any more left that want
to play. The Premiere team is obviously
the ideal. They had two days of tryouts
where they were evaluated by people who have never seen them play in a real
game, which was stressful. There was a
little bit of drama with two of our smaller girls, Averi and Reese. At the end of the second day they had split
the girls into two groups of what looked like would be the Premiere and Select
teams and they had Reese and Averi over on the other team. They moved them around a little and pulled
Reese over at one point. But Averi was
there for awhile and feeling pretty dejected.
Our coach Valene went and talked to one of the guys in charge and told
him to keep his eye on Averi. He said he
hadn’t realized she was one of ours. A
bit later he moved her over too. But
Averi knew the only reason was because the coach had talked to him. We were all a bit nervous to find out the results. But in the end, everyone from our team made
the cut except Reese. Reese is a really
sweet, fun girl and Kylee is really disappointed. She has also come a long way in her game from
when she started. But there were a
handful of really good players from the Knights as well. Our neighbors Jerzey and Willow both made the
Premiere team too so they will all be playing together now. Hopefully that will make things a little less
tense. They aren’t exactly mean to each
other, but they are a bit cold sometimes.
We will see. But that is not
until Spring. Fall soccer is Jr High
teams. Averi isn’t sure she wants to do
the school team. She might need a
break. She’s getting burned out. Kylee has no such feelings and loves every
minute. Either way I’m excited for the
coming year!
Dylan’s soccer got a little more complicated this year. He played the regular Monday/Wednesday stuff (which was different this year, and I didn’t really love it- they had these coaches come in from Coever and do their practices, where they focused more on short game and they didn’t put them on teams, they just put small teams together every week and scrimmaged. I’m sure Dylan needs the help on his short game, but it was not as fun to watch as an actual game.) And he also got to play on an extended team that practiced together and played a couple Pocatello teams. We were hoping that would’ve been put together earlier and had more games, but it was fun what we got to do. This extended team had enough boys for two teams so they split them mostly evenly and had two coaches for each team. Dylan’s coaches were guys we have known, Layne McCord and Archibald (he had a kid Kylee’s age and helped coach her back then too). Dylan did great on this team and enjoyed it. I didn’t know the other two coaches. At the end of May, they held a “tryout” so they could put together a team to play in the two tournaments (the same ones Kylee played in). Layne, one of Dylan’s coach and a friend of our family because he has a daughter on Kylee’s team too and we’ve known them for awhile now, he told me that Dylan had nothing to worry about, he would for sure make the team. He wasn’t worried at all. I wasn’t worried either, but I didn’t tell Dylan that. I told him to try his best and prove himself. I didn’t want him acting cocky or not trying. Well, at the tryout, Layne wasn’t there. It was the other two coaches that I didn’t know. Archibald showed up too but he is a very quiet, soft spoken guy that doesn’t like conflict. I watched a bit of the tryout (I was watching Kylee’s game while the boys did their tryout behind me). It seemed like Dylan was kind of choking. His speed is one of his strongest features and he was getting beat in their sprints, which was weird. They were taking shots on goal and he was missing. Still, I wasn’t worried because his two coaches have seen him play and he is the strongest defensive player they have. Fast forward a couple of days and I receive an email listing the boys who made the team for the tournaments and Dylan is not on it.
I was upset. I picked up my phone to send a text to Kristi McCord (because I don’t text dudes, I just have wives phone numbers, lol). I was going to ask them what happened and how can they fix it. But then I stopped. I didn’t want to be that mom. He didn’t prove himself and he got cut. It sucks, but that’s how it happens. But a few days later I got a text from Kristi. They had been out of state during the tryouts and had just got back and saw the email. She asked what happened, if Dylan didn’t try out or something. So I told her he just got cut and we were pretty surprised. Layne told me to come to the practice they were having for the boys that DID make the cut. That he was going to talk to the other coaches. I felt pretty dumb. But Layne talked to us, told us one reason they cut Dylan was because he was playing around a bit and not paying attention enough at the tryouts. After that first practice, the other coach, Drew, told Layne that Dylan was a great player. He didn’t really say that he made a huge mistake and he wanted to for sure have Dylan play in the tournament, though. The problem was that the deadline for players in that tournament was the day Layne got back in town and I knew he wasn’t going to make calls and stuff on a Sunday. I knew he would wait to talk to the other coaches at practice the next day. But by then they couldn’t invite him to play because the teams had to be locked down already. I had hopes that they would invite him to play in the Dean Cook tournament later in the month. Layne said he wanted Dylan to continue to practice with them twice a week. And when the tournament came that weekend, they lost and Layne said they would’ve had a much better chance with Dylan. Funny thing is they also cut Layne’s son for the second tournament, which is gutsy since Layne is the coach. But again, they’d never seen them play. ALSO, Drew (the other coach) knew the parents of all the other boys personally. There were at least a couple boys on the team that were definitely nothing special. But they knew Drew from work or whatever else. The whole thing literally made me sick and I think I was more upset than Dylan. I mean, I know I was. Dylan wasn’t all that invested in it. He was happy to keep playing and practicing with them. But he didn’t look shocked when I told him he was cut at first. He knew the tryouts didn’t go that well. Layne was possibly just as upset as I was about Dylan though, which is funny. This is why I like having coaches that know my kids! Because you can’t tell how good of a defender someone is at a tryout unless they scrimmage. Taking shots on goal is not what a defender does.
Anyway, in the end there were not enough teams in Dylan’s age group for the tournament so I never got the satisfaction of having them invite Dylan to play. But they did set up a scrimmage with some 2007-2008 girls, a lot of which Dylan knew. It was a fun game to watch, and the boys got beat, which is probably good for them to humble them a bit. The girls played hard! I’m not sure how all this is going to play out next season. They were talking about wanting two teams, some people don’t really like Drew as a coach (Layne included- he says Drew’s pep talk before the tournament was “you’re probably going to lose, but just play your best.” Who says that to a team before a game?) So I just requested Archibald and McCord and we will see how it goes. I want a coach that appreciates my kid and sees his strengths. Dylan loves soccer.
No comments:
Post a Comment