I remember when they were 7.... the craving for psychiatric drugs was at times almost overpowering.... But I managed to resist the urges, you can too.

Oh. You mean.. well. Read this first.

We are preparing for the big tournament a week from saturday. We have one practice of normal technique, systems, and drills and two scrimmages each week.

Another club in the area had some problems and their team split up. They had one player that we'd watched and been impressed with and his parents brought him to our practices this week to try out. His technique is excellent but Monday left me unimpressed with his work ethic and a hint of petulance. HC saw the kid's footwork and nothing else. HC was almost jumping up and down with joy at having this kid.

Tuesday night brought a quick end to that thought. We scrimmaged another team in our age group and absolutely dismantled them. Lil Lookout, Bi, and Ba had some excellent passing movement down. P (the new kid) was excellent with the ball but wasn't passing at all. After that scrimmage we turned around and scrimmaged a team from an age group up. They're bigger, stronger, and much more physical but our kids are actually more skilled. Again our kids were doing well, but now they started getting upset when they'd call for the ball and P would choose to dribble into a crowd instead of passing. This happened repeatedly and we tried coaching P on the issue but he just rolled his eyes and went back to doing his thing.

On one play Bi had the ball under pressure and passed out to LL who one touched it about 20 feet into P. At that point P had about 5 feet of space and then hard pressure. He had Ba open on his right, LL WIDE open on his left but decided to bulldoze his way through instead. He inevitably lost the ball at which point LL and Ba jumped on his case again about passing. Apparently he didn't like the criticism because he coldcocked Lil Lookout. He just caught him right on the jaw and dropped him. At that point Ba, Da, Bi, and Br jumped on top of him and started punching. We pulled them off and made the whole team run laps for a bit while discussing the issue with P's dad. Apparently, that type of thing has happened before so we have passed on the opportunity to have P play with us. Whatever.

Lil Lookout has received a very valuable lesson: If you are going to jump someone's shit, you'd better be fully prepared for the consequences. He didn't deserve the punch, but it won't do him any harm to be taken down a notch either. (I didn't point out, but did note that the whole team was prepared to jump in and defend one of their own. I'll count that as a positive for teambuilding)

That the team has come together and was willing to defend one of their own is a great thing! Your team sounds as if its gelling very well.

Either that or they're just violent thugs in training. Either way, it should be fun.

"Lookout's Corporate Team Building Seminars" Space is limited so sign up now!

I can totally see it: Get them all out in the woods doing the usual ghey team building shit then out of the blue have some guy from middle management start a dogpile on the guy who refuses to play reindeer games with the rest of the group.

That would be my next million.

ha ha, I hope they beat that bitch down!

Did you, like, hurry to pull your guys off?

This could have been a scene in an old Disney flick....

Lil Lookout's off to the races. This was his second goal in our last game.

Uh oh, I've screwed up the attachment again. I'll try to fix that later, but first a quick update on the team.

We successfully navigated our first tournament (and first game as a team) this past weekend. The tournament was in Flagstaff so a lot of preparation went into this one. Normal league play doesn't start until next weekend so we didn't have the opportunity to run the kids out and see how they perform against real opposition until the first game of the tourney. The state association divides teams by birth year and than subdivides by tiers - tier 1 being the highest skill level for a team to be. We are an 01 tier 2 team. We actually have three players that could be 2002 players if there was a competitive division for that younger age.

Anyway, we got to the tournament checkin in Flag to find out that more than half of the clubs who came last year opted out this year. Only one other club brought a team in our age group so we were all lumped into the U10 age bracket which means our 6 and 7 year olds would be playing against kids up to 3 years older than they are. Eh, trial by fire works I guess.

Our first game was Saturday morning and it happened to be against the only other 01 team in the tournament. We lined our kids up in a pretty balanced manner that looked like

We had to change things up when Lil Lookout had a 1 minute 18 second hattrick thanks to some nice passing and a little fancy footwork. By the ten minute mark we had our kids restricted to 1) No shots on goal until 6 complete passes, 2) no shots inside the 18 yard box. We put Lil Lookout in the goal for the second half and "accidentally" forgot to put enough players on the field in the second half. We still won 15-0. It was uncomfortably embarrassing. The other coach was very nice about it and not upset at all. The other kids were genuinely thrilled that our supporters invited them to run through the "honor tunnel" (yes, very cheesy but the parents like it and the kids love it) after the game then they hung out with us for another hour or so. I honestly can't count the nice passes and all the goalscorers. I know that Lil Lookout had 8 goals and 4 assists in the first half though.

Our next game was that afternoon against a 2000, Tier 1 team. Several of these kids came up to my chin and they were freaking good. End of story. They beat our 2000 team 5-0 earlier in the day so I was hoping for a draw. We put biggest, strongest kids in defense and they were still smaller than the smallest player on the other team. That team kicked the crap out of our kids. I got into it with the other coach after the second time Lil Lookout got kicked in the face by the same kid. Our keeper and defensive line were fantastic under pressure. LL and Br linked up to send us into the final 15 minutes winning 2-0. Then it all fell apart. Br got kicked in the throat and went down in a heap. Immediately after that Ba got tackled from behind and went down holding a knee. I've got two kids down hurt and the ref didn't blow the whistle so the other team attacked and scored. We settled the kids and picked up the pieces but the difference in priorities and squad depth became an issue. We played all of our kids nearly equal minutes because we feel it is the right thing to do. The other team chose to bench their weaker players for the last ten minutes and really took advantage of the S/D combo we had in defense out of necessity. They aren't a great combo but we didn't have a choice. That lineup conceded 2 more points in the last 5 minutes. We lost that game 3-2.

Our third game was Sunday against a 2000, tier 2 team. I felt confident about this game because all we had to do was score one and keep a clean sheet to advance to the finals because of the point differential from the first game. Again we were outsized (the picture above is from this game) but confident. Lil Lookout put us up 2-0 before the half on two breakaway plays. Unfortunately he got sloppy and started getting caught offside or it could have been 4 or 5-0. Eh, lessons learned. We got to the final five minutes holding them 2-0 when the referee handed them a gift. The other team had a throw-in right by our box. Da had his back turned looking to make sure everyone was marked when the player threw the ball in - directly at Da's outstretched arm. 99 out of 100 referees would have declared that a ball-to-hand event and waived play on, but this genius called it a handball. Inside the 18 yard box. With a minute and a half left. PENALTY KICK! Our keeper managed to get a glove on the ball but the ball landed neatly in the back of the net. We're still winning 2-1 but because we didn't hold them scoreless we have to beat them by three points to advance to the finals. We threw everything at them and Lil Lookout blasted another one in from outside, but the other team hit us on the break while we had kids pushed forward for another so the game finished 3-2 in our favor but we crashed out of the tournament.

The kids were pretty upset and there were a lot of tears, but they realized pretty quickly that they came within two minutes of making it to the finals of a tournament playing teams a lot older and a lot bigger than they are so they had nothing to be ashamed of. All in all, they did great.

LL needs to work on beating the offside trap and staying on his feet under harsh tackles.
Br needs to work on his attitude.
K needs to work on staying in the game rather than drifting in and out.
Da needs to work on his passing.
Ba needs the same.
Bi needs to be more assertive.
J,Di,S, and T need to work on their ball handling and positioning.

Much more to learn during this very long season. We have at least 6 major tournaments plus normal league play over the next 8 months. Hopefully we'll be playing kids in our own age group from here on out.

Sounds like overall it was very a successful tourney. This was the first for many of your players too - right? Your kids learned how to play against bigger/older/stronger/faster... players. All in all invaluable experience that will pay huge dividends as the season progresses.

Hope you are well - good to hear from you again.

Keep your fingers crossed, we play our fiercest rivals tomorrow morning. The team we'll play has several players who trained with us previously. and one complete nutjob coach.

/frat/Woooo!/boy/ Today is the first day of league play. Our kids have had to play a year up in all the competitions we've been in and have held their own, but today we got to see how they really compare. We are playing against teams in our own age bracket for League play and I'm excited.

The team we played against is one we have a very real rivalry and in truth quite a bit of animosity. HC couldn't make it today so I got to run the show the way I wanted with no outside input. I wanted a balanced team so I started with


The kids really played out of their socks. I can only remember 4 or 5 times the other team really threatened our goal. LL, Ba, K and Bi really have some nice passing movement. Br showed a bit more today and I have hope for him. Da used to be a VERY selfish player but has really stepped up to become a good team player with intelligent passing.

LL scored 2. One was a beautiful run when he picked the ball up at midfield and dribbled through the defenders. K kept pace with him and LL kept looking over waiting to pass but K, in his excitement was offside the whole way, so LL cut in and slammed the ball home. The other was set up by Da who made a great run then passed the ball out into space in front of LL. LL got there at the same time as the keeper and the ball popped into the air. LL put his back to the goal, blocking the keeper out and caught the ball as it came down with a beautiful volley that went straight over his head, over the keeper, and into the net. Unfortunately he sat out the last 15 minutes of the game after a nasty slide tackle from behind. He had the other player beat so the kid slid in on him, which is a foul, but then the kid rolled up the outside of his left leg causing his knee to buckle. He'll be fine but he's got a pretty nasty limp going.

Da scored 3 in his usual scrappy fashion. When the goal is in front of him the kid has a knack for muscling his way through.

K scored a nice left foot volley and made some really nice runs down the left which is important for his confidence.

Br plays as a very selfish forward but I put him in defensive midfield today and he did a good job in that role.

All in all the kids looked great. I was happy with their performance and they looked very happy with the result.

Cool!

(err, what was the result?)

6 nil to our boys.

It has been really hard to keep up on this because we've been so busy, but 2.0 is down for a nap so here is a brief rundown. As mentioned in another thread we had another big tournament recently. This tournament was HUGE, with a capital UGE. There were a bunch of sponsors, but Puma really put some serious backing into this one. without going into all the details I'd like to point out that we're a tier 2 team but they didn't have a tier two bracket and they didn't want us to play down in tier 3, so they bumped us up into tier 1. What's that mean? Our kids played the three top ranked teams in the state.

They played awesome. Absolutely incredible. Every one of them. They won those three games 2-0, 3-0, and 2-0. Three clean sheets and plenty of goals. They won the whole tournament playing up a division. Lil Lookout played very well, but the surprise was K who finally came out of his shell and lit the place on fire. Well done boys.

This morning we played another Tier 1 team and beat them 7-1. I think they'll be moving us up to Tier 1 at the end of the season.

Below are some pics from the tournament.