Month: September 2015 (Page 1 of 2)

In reverse order of age this time, your periodic Kid Sports Update.

L., and her whole soccer team, rebounded nicely from their rough first week. Playing against teams that have not been full of second graders like their first opponent, they’ve won two-straight games in shutouts. She scored three goals last week and two yesterday.

Most impressively, her team is playing pretty, team soccer. Most of the kids are learning how to pass out of traffic and then run to space. Last week she was bringing the ball up the middle. When two defenders cut her off, she made a nice pass out to the left, where a teammate ran onto the ball. She immediately cut away and towards the goal. Her teammate took a couple dribbles and then fired a pass to the middle. She collected it, danced around a couple defenders, and scored. I couldn’t get my U–10 team to do that last year!

She also made a perfect pass from the goal line back across the penalty box that a teammate ran onto and blasted. He was unlucky, hitting the goalie square in the chest, but it was a gorgeous play.

L’s team has eight kids, there are eight periods, and four positions on the field. With every kid playing half the game that means they rotate through all four positions. Last week she had played sweeper and both forward spots. When her final period began, the coach asked, “OK, who hasn’t played goalie yet?” She turned, looked at the ground, and took a few steps behind another teammate. She clearly was not interested in playing goal. We laughed out loud at her attempt to hide. The coach found her, though, and put her in goal. We think she just much prefers offense. But she also got to play goalie one quarter last spring when she played up for a game. And she let in two goals when kids three years older than her blasted it by her because she was out of position. I think she has some nervousness about what to do. She shouldn’t have been nervous. She picked up the ball both times it was close to her and made great passes out to teammates.

C. has had a great couple weeks of cross country. Two weeks ago, at a big invitational meet that featured about 700 total kids, she finished 35th of 120 in her gender/age group. The top 30 got ribbons so she just missed on that. And she cut over 30 seconds off her previous best time.

This weekend she ran in a much smaller meet. We don’t have official times yet, but she was right around the 15:30 she ran the previous week. This time that was good for 13th place. When she finished I told her she was around 15th or 16th. As they were bringing the award winners up to the stage, and went past those two places without calling her name, I watched her look around to her friends with a look of surprise and amazement. I was glad I miscounted the girls in front of her, because it made her even more proud of her result.

Her team takes this weekend off then she runs in the city championships next Wednesday.

And then kickball. M’s team played in the city semifinals last week. We knew it was going to be a tougher game than any of their regular season contests. As the first semifinal was wrapping up, we watched St. P’s opponent, St. M, warm up on a side field. Their first baseman couldn’t catch anything. Their other infielders were having trouble fielding it. “Man,” I thought, “they’re going to cream these kids.”

Whoops.

St. P’s scored three in the top of the first, but that was a struggle because St. M’s was making every defensive play. Then, in the bottom of the inning, the first seven St. M’s players got on base and scored. One girl, who was about the size of the smallest St. P’s girls, cranked the ball over the head of our left fielder.

We held them scoreless for the next three innings, but could only add two runs of our own, making it 7–5. St. M’s scored two more in the fifth, and then two, two-out runs in the 6th. Our girls could only score three over the last three innings and lost 13–8. That one, poor inning was the difference.

St. M’s had some sixth graders, so our coaches told the girls there was nothing to be ashamed of. Besides, they got a trophy for winning their division and were super excited about getting that to put in the school lobby.

It may have been a good thing they lost, too. The team they would have played in the final, St. S, was very, very good. They beat the St. P’s team that had a mix of 5th and 6th graders twice in the regular season. Not saying we couldn’t have beaten them, but it was going to be a struggle.

The bigger thing, though, is we avoided St. S’s coach. Or rather I avoided him. We’ve heard stories about him all year. Apparently he is rather annoying if your kid is not on his team. He likes to yell out the calls on the bases, or at least his view of them, louder than the umpire. And then argues any call he disagrees with. We also heard, from the other St. P’s team, that he’ll yell at players on the other team, “Two outs, run on anything,” even when there aren’t two outs. The coach of the other St. P’s team, who we know pretty well and is about as laid-back and pleasant as you can be, had to tell him to knock it off the two times their teams played. Since I keep score, there’s a good chance I could have been standing near him for seven innings. Which meant A) my blood pressure would likely be sky-high if he really behaves as we’ve heard, B) my mouth would likely be bleeding from biting my lips, tongue, and cheeks to keep from saying anything and C) there’s about an even-money chance I would have said something to him at some point.

One thing I’ve learned in our girls’ years of sports is that games are much more pleasant and relaxed when moms[1] are coaching. Not that there aren’t still disagreements and discussions, and our coaches were all super competitive and wanted to win every game. But it seems like if there are two moms coaching, they find a way to work it out and end the game smiling and wishing each other luck. Men, and I include myself here, are generally overly competitive idiots who let the testosterone get in the way of letting our kids have fun.

That nonsense aside, M. really enjoyed this year. She got better and was on a really good team. On our way home after the loss, she said she was sad, not because the team lost, but because she wouldn’t be able to go to practice and games with that group of girls until volleyball begins in December. More than the wins or her personal improvement, that was my favorite moment of the season.

With the late holiday, our kid fall sports calendars are a little odd this year. Kickball always starts just after school begins and runs for only three weeks. And soccer did not start until after Labor Day. But as of Sunday, we finally have all three girls on the fields each week.

Kickball

It’s been a fantastic season for M’s team. Last night they wrapped up a perfect regular season with their fifth run-ruled win in seven games. Now I must point out that some oddness in both the rules for this age group and how St. P’s picks teams combined to make M’s team much, much more talented than any team they faced. At this level, fifth and sixth graders play together. The best team from each school is put into the A league, and then the remaining girls get dropped into the B league. St. P’s had enough girls come out that they had an all-sixth grader team in the A league, and then a mixed sixth/fifth and a fifth grade-only team in the B league. M was on the fifth-only team, and because St. P’s just divides up girls rather than ranks the girls, her team ended up with the 4–5 best fifth graders. One poor team in their division only had three fifth graders and then a bunch of fourth graders that had to play up. St. P’s whacked them 61–11 in five innings. It was pretty brutal to watch.

Anyway, M’s team is moving on to the city tournament, which is next week. They play another undefeated team on Tuesday in the semifinals. Win that and they play either St. S, which beat the 5th/6th team from St. P’s twice, or St. B, our nemesis from kickball and volleyball last year.

It’s been cool to watch our girls play. Last year we had about two really good players. This year, most of the girls kick much better, understand how to run bases, and generally do a really good job in the field. They catch almost everything and routinely throw out girls at first base on anything that stays in front of the pitcher.

M. has really gotten better, too. She mastered bunting this year, which in kickball means you tap the ball so it goes beyond the five-foot arc[1] and then haul ass to first base. In fact, I think she only made one or two outs when she bunted. I forced her to kick hard late in games when they were way ahead and then she almost always made an out. Which led to this conversation after games, “See what happens when I try to kick hard, Dad? I make outs. And I don’t like making outs.”

Last week she had her best game ever kicking, assisted by some fielding issues by the other team. Twice she dribbled the ball forward and took off for first. Twice the suicide (infielder who plays next to pitcher) raced up to knock the ball foul before it crossed the five-foot arc. Twice the suicide was late and hit the ball after it had moved fair. Once she hit it about ten feet behind home and M. ended up on third. The other time the girl blasted the ball and it rolled 30 feet beyond home. M. raced around and came home for a Little League home run, kickball style. As I posted to Facebook, we are absolutely counting that as a home run!

She’s also gotten much better in the field. She’s thrown out at least six girls at first when playing suicide on the third base side. She quickly grabs the ball, turns and heaves it to first without looking. Somehow the ball is always perfectly on line, takes one big bounce, and beats the runner to first. One game the other coach told his players to kick it to her. She threw out the first two runners of the inning before he told them to kick it somewhere else. Respect from the other coach! Never thought I’d see the day!

Cross Country

C. has now run in two cross country meets. Her first, the weekend before Labor Day, had a relay setup. Each runner was paired with another, and they took turns running 1K loops until the team had compiled 6K total. She and her partner finished exactly in the middle, both in place and time. They were 17th of 35 teams, six minutes behind the winners and six minutes ahead of the last-place finishers.

She had her first chance to run solo this past weekend. She did great, coming in 25th of 60 third and fourth grade girls in 16:03.

She’s pretty funny to watch run. Like a lot of kids her age, she doesn’t have the best form. Her arms tend to drop and she is often leaning forward too far with her upper body. You’d think nothing could be more natural for a kid than running, right? Like probably every kid ever, when she runs close to us and we’re able to cheer loud enough for her to hear, she kicks it up a notch. And when she thinks she’s out of sight, she dials it waaaay back.

We think she’s enjoying it, although it’s hard to tell sometimes. I think she likes being on a team, enjoys the time she spends with a couple of her closest friends who are also running, and feels herself improving. But I don’t know that she loves the actual running. They practice three times a week, which means her evenings are kind of a wreck with her coming home tired and hungry. I still think she may be better suited to track than cross country, but she is only a third grader. She had plenty of time to figure that out.

Soccer

Finally, L. had her first soccer game last Sunday. She’s moved up to U8 this year, and her team is mixed between young first graders and second graders. The team they played Sunday was almost all second graders, and that age/experience difference showed. L’s team lost 4–1, primarily because the first three kids to play goalie for her team kept forgetting they could use their hands. A couple of the goals came when they were flailing at the ball with their feet and it bounced by when they could have easily picked it up.

For probably the first time since she started playing, she was not the best player on the field. She struggled to retain possession against the bigger kids. The few times she got the ball on a breakaway, they ran her down where last year she could outrun everybody. She never got a good scoring chance in the box. A couple times she shot the ball from way too far out to have a real chance.

We saw her developing some bad habits last spring when she was still playing against the younger kids. She needs to work to get rid of them. She developed a stupid ”trick” of intentionally falling down every time she kicked the ball hard. She was still doing that Sunday. And the shooting from way out thing was a way to challenge herself last year, when she had no defensive pressure on her and no goalie in front of her. Those are easy saves this year.

I think this year is going to be good for her. She loves soccer and says she wants to be a professional player when she grows up. She’s going to have to figure out how to hold possession against the bigger kids, how to pass and run to space in order to get good scoring chances, and remember to never turn the ball to the middle when she’s on defense. She still had lots of fun Sunday, although she was bummed that they lost. For her two classmates that were on her last two teams, this was the first time they had ever lost a game together! Pretty good run.