Tag: soccer (Page 6 of 9)

Kid Sports Roundup

November 4, 2015 / DB

Another October down the drain.

In all this baseball madness I was not in the mood to write about much else. So some catching up is in order. Let’s begin with wrapping up the younger two girls’ fall sports experiences.

When we last discussed sports, C. was building up for her final race of the year, the City Championship meet. This was going to be the biggest meet St. P’s ran in, with something like 27 schools taking part. So big, in fact, that the girls and boys ran on different days.

Once again, she did awesome. She finished 41st overall, 20th in her grade. She was the third St. P’s girl to finish; first of their third graders. Most importantly, she cut her time for the fourth-straight race. In her first individual race in early September, she ran 3K in 16:03. In the City meet, she finished in 15:23. Dropping 40 seconds in five weeks is pretty damn good!

She was very excited with her race. When I found her in the mass of humanity at the finish line, she smiled and said, “I threw up in my mouth a little while I was running!” Based on her tone, I think she contributed some of her speed to that near disaster.

She loved her first year of cross country. Her coaches were pleased with how far she came this year. And I think we’re all excited to see what she can do next year if she runs through the summer and when she’s in the top half of her age group.

L’s soccer season ran until the Sunday before Halloween. After that rough start, where she looked over-matched physically and her team got stomped, things got much better. She scored at least one goal in every game and her team never lost again. She continued to improve her ball control, her passing got really good, and she was often lining up to use her left foot in traffic, something her coach wanted her to focus on.

There was a game mid-season that we feared would be like the season opener. Their opponents looked to be heavy with second graders. One boy in particular looked to be closer to 9 than 8. While we watched the kids warm up, we were a little worried.

Misplaced worry, it turned out. Our kids ran circles around the bigger kids. The stole the ball and passed away. They ran to space and waited for a teammate to find them. They peppered the goalie with shots all day. The final score ended up being something ridiculous like 10–1.[1]

The biggest thing is she had fun. She loves soccer. She can’t wait for practice nights and Sundays when games roll around. She’s lucky that she’s had a coach the past two seasons who works the kids hard, but also keeps it fun. For their last practice, he turned them loose and had them play a modified version of Australian Rules football. She was rolling around with the second grade boys and having a great time.

And now we’re done with sports for a bit. M. will begin volleyball practice over Christmas break. So we have nearly two months where we don’t have to fight traffic to get to 5:30 practices four nights a week, or have our weekends dominated by games.

We know this because the older sisters, all fifth and sixth graders, made a scoreboard and were tracking goals. Thank goodness the other team’s parents were sitting across the field. ↩

Kid Sports

September 28, 2015 / DB

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.

Or aunts, etc. ↩

Kid Sports Notes

September 15, 2015 / DB

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.

In CYO kickball there is an arc that runs foul line to foul line five feet in front of home. If the defense can get to the ball before it crosses that line and push it back, it counts as a foul ball. Once it crosses that line, it’s fair and in play. ↩

Sports Takes

June 23, 2015 / DB

Some sporting notes.

US Open

I rarely watch golf anymore. Mostly because I haven’t swung a club in over eight years.¹ And when Tiger flamed out I suddenly had no real rooting interest. The wave of new, young players all seemed like only slightly different versions of the same guy. Which, to be fair, is always kind of the case in golf.

But I did watch healthy doses of Sunday’s final round of the U.S. Open. I always like it when professional golfers are bitching about the conditions at the Open, for starters. And the late start meant I could watch into the evening.

I was able to watch the last half-hour or so uninterrupted. Which was a solid 30 minutes of televised sports drama. Jordan Spieth has the tournament won, leading by three strokes with two to play. Then, suddenly, he’s tied with Dustin Johnson as he walks to the 18th tee. Then he calmly birdies and heads to the clubhouse to watch Johnson hit a massive drive and perfect approach to give himself an excellent shot to win, and a nearly 100% chance of forcing a playoff. So of course he three-putts to hand the Open to Spieth.
Wacky, wild stuff.

Like I said, I don’t know much about these guys. I know Spieth won the Masters but gets very little credit from other golfers because his game lacks any “Wow” factor. I know Johnson is engaged to Paulina Gretzky, has tons of talent, but may have some self control issues. But if those two, and Rory McIlroy, who I know plenty about, are always in contention in majors, I just might start watching golf a little more.

NBA Finals/LeBron

First off, a pretty entertaining Finals series this year. I love the way both teams made the most of their talent and relied on ball-movement, motion away from the ball, and outside shooting to win. And I really like how NBA referees call the game compared to college refs. There wasn’t a whistle every single possession and replay reviews were much brisker than in college.
I was pulling for the Warriors, because how can you not like Steph Curry and the rest of the Splash Brothers,² but would have been fine with Cleveland winning, too.
Which brings us to the biggest issues following the series: the criticism of LeBron.
Man, people be crazy.
How can you criticize a guy who lost his two best teammates during the playoffs and still willed his team to a 2-1 lead in the Finals? A guy who was a triple-double machine in every game, often before the third quarter had ended. How is he supposed to do more than he did? Yeah, he wilted in the fourth quarter of game six. But it’s shocking he didn’t fall apart sooner given all he was asked to do. Replace him with a second-tier NBA star, and the Cavs were a lottery team after Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving went down.

But because LeBron isn’t the ruthless competitor that Jordan and Kobe were, because he seems to actually treat his teammates with respect and give them the chance to succeed, because he still has moments of humility. Because of all of that, and our Hot Takes media environment, he gets blasted for being 2-4 in his Finals career.

Please.
Oh, and it was very amusing to listen to the ABC broadcasting team tiptoe around the difference in the Warriors this year. Sure, Harrison Barnes and Draymond Green developed into key contributors. Steph was the MVP. And Klay Thompson rivaled Russell Westbrook for the league’s best sidekick.

But the real difference was the coach. Firing Mark Jackson, who returned to ABC, and replacing him with Steve Kerr was the biggest factor in Golden State’s improvement. I loved the way Kerr ran his team, made adjustments both within and between games. And I loved how he gave credit to his coaching staff for coming up with ideas for how to change their attack. As a broadcaster, you could always tell he had a great understanding of the game. It’s been cool to see that he can turn that knowledge into great coaching.

It’s a shame that Jackson’s presence on the ABC team kept them from acknowledging Kerr’s effect on the Warriors.

Women’s World Cup

L. and I stayed up to watch the sloppy 2-1 U.S. win over Colombia last night. That was hardly an inspiring effort. Although L. thought the whole thing was pretty cool. She put on her Stars and Stripes hat from her school program and found a red pompom she waved around. She also told me she was going to play in the tournament one day. Although that was only after she said she wanted to play in the MLS. I told her that was only for boys, which was stupid. Since professional women’s soccer can’t seem to survive in the U.S., why shouldn’t she dream of playing in the MLS?

I gave my clubs to a nephew a couple years back. So even if I had the urge to go swing the sticks at a driving range, I have no sticks to swing. ↩
And Brandon Rush gets a ring! ↩

June???

June 1, 2015 / DB

Jeez. Another month that just flew by.

Games, practices, birthdays, the first couple lake weekends of the year. And the winding down of the school year. Cram it all into a 31-day stretch and we’re turning the calendar seemingly moments after we last did so.

L. wrapped up soccer yesterday. She enjoyed this season, but also developed some bad habits that were inevitable when she was, at times, playing against four-year-olds. Both she and we are glad that she’ll be moving up to U8 in the fall.

Her coach also coaches a U8 team and had her play with them in their final game of the season a week ago. She hung right in there, showing no fear against one kid that was much bigger than her.[1] When he had the ball, she dove in and tried to steal it. When he tried to stop her, she moved her body and tried to work around him. This was her first time playing against a goalie, so the couple times she got near the goal, she often shot from too-far out and the balls either went wide or were easily collected. She also made some great passes to space where other teammates could collect them. Late in her second quarter, she got the ball just inside midfield and took a mighty kick. It wasn’t a terrible shot as there was no one between her and the goal. And the goalie just happened to be staring at his belly-button.[2] Unfortunately the ball slid just wide of the goal. There was a gasp among the parents as they realized the tiniest kid on the field might kick it in from 40 feet away. In her final period, she got to play goalie, which she’s never done before. She came charging out when the best player on the other team had the ball and he whistled a shot over her shoulder and into the goal. But she handled a couple other loose balls well and made quick throws downfield that got her offense going. She had a lot of fun that night.

C. still has at least five softball games left. We’ve been rained out two of the last three weekends, plus did not play over Memorial Day weekend. So she got a bit rusty. After going through a five game stretch where she reached base 19-straight times, she took the collar and struck out in all three at bats last Tuesday. She was very upset after the game. We worked a lot over the weekend and she was back to smacking the ball over my head. Knock-on-wood she’s able to do that again tomorrow night.

I believe I mentioned a week or so back that M. has declared that she wants to run cross country in the fall. We pulled out good, old Google Maps over the weekend and plotted a couple courses through the neighborhood that she can begin run/walking with us. Her aunt and uncle just happen to live exactly a half mile away. So if we can get her able to run there-and-back she should be in good shape to begin practice in August and work up to the 1.8 miles she’ll need to be able to run in September. Of course, this is all theoretical at this point. She may hate it once we’re forcing her to run and yelling at her when she whines about being tired.

Memorial Day weekend was our first, full lake weekend. Gorgeous weather, good friends joining us, and a generally successful start to the summer season.

Now we’re in the final countdown of the school year. The girls get out at 11:00 am Wednesday. Today is desk cleaning day, tomorrow is field day, and I think there is a lot of movie watching in between. The girls keep asking why they get out a week after just about everybody else, both public and Catholic schools, around us. It’s those damn random Mondays we get off throughout the year, plus the mini-break that’s built into February to make up snow days before spring break. While the other kids on their swim team are in the pool this morning at the first practice, they will have to wait either until tonight’s session or Thursday morning. It all depends what the weather is like this evening.

Anyway, it’s June. Which is freaking hard to believe. We’ve been working on a list of things to do over the summer to keep us busy. The girls have been calling it their Summer Bucket List, which makes me laugh a little bit. I guess they are things we want to do before the summer dies, so that name seems appropriate.

This kid was a normal-sized 8-year-old. When our coach told a couple of his smaller kids to “stay close to the tall kid,” he turned and said, “Hey! I’m not tall!” I think we just taught him a valuable lesson about perspective! ↩

Literally. He had his jersey pulled up and was picking at his navel. ↩

Kid Notes

May 19, 2015 / DB

Some assorted Kid Notes that have been jotted down in recent weeks.

This is totally unofficial, and I base it without knowing anything about the rest of the school, but I’m declaring my girls the Reading Champions of St. P’s.

Second graders are given reading wheels during second semester they are required to complete. They contain 12 categories, with the entries each, that the kids have to read a book for. For example, two mysteries, two animal books, two books of poetry, and so on. C. was the first kid in her grade to complete hers and earn a week free from homework.

Next, the entire school had a reading challenge in March. Each day you wrote down how much you read and at the end of the month, you tallied it up and turned it in. For some reason it took over a month to get the results, but both M. and L. were winners for their classes. Each girl got their name announced to the entire school, got an out-of-uniform day, and earned ice cream at lunch.

C. did a fine job there as well, but unfortunately (for her) a girl in her class read almost as much as M. and kind of blew the rest of the second grade away.

The best part about the reading challenge was that L. called her shot. When the explanatory sheet came home in late February, she announced, “I’m going to win it!” It ain’t braggin’ if you can back it up.

I hope L. keeps her love of all things school-related going forward. A mom from her class told me one day that, when the kindergarteners received an assignment that was supposed to be done over a week, her son said, “L.’s probably going to have it done before the weekend is over.” The mom also said that her son is always talking about smart L. is.

Oh, she did have that project done before the weekend was over.

One more reading note. L. and I read together most nights before bed. Some nights she reads to me. But we’ve been getting into longer chapter books and I’ve been reading to her again when we work through those. We’re three books into the Ivy and Bean series, which we are both enjoying.

In one of the books, Bean is talking about her big sister, who is always bossing her around and meddling in her fun. L. leaned over to me, put her hand to my ear, and whispered, “I know how that feels!” then looked at me with a crazy grin. I tried not to react, but in seconds we were both laughing. M. was sitting a few feet away from us. She generally thinks you’re talking about her even if you’re not, so she immediately began whining that we were making fun of her.

“We’re not!” I lied as I tried to control my laughter.

“Then what are you laughing about?” she shrieked.

“Oh…just that crazy Bean!”

L. and I looked at each other and lost it again.

I mentioned in my post for C.’s birthday how sweet she can be. L. has a sweet side, too. Recently M. completed a big social studies project with three classmates. It involved about three weeks of work and two get-togethers outside of school to assemble the materials. The girls got a perfect score for their research and presentation.

The evening the grading sheet came home, I found a dollar sitting next to it on the kitchen counter. When I asked who the dollar belonged to, L. said, “I gave it to M. for doing such a good job on her project!”

Now, I think that’s just L. being sweet. But there is a small part of me that thought, “I wonder if M. heard that kids in her class get monetary rewards for good grades and told L. to give her a dollar so maybe S. and I would start giving them money when they bring home A’s.” I wouldn’t put it past them.

OK, these are turning out to be mostly about L.. Oh well.

I may have mentioned this one before, but back when M. was still playing volleyball, we were sitting in the school lobby one afternoon waiting for practice to start. That was also the first day of track practice, and those kids – fourth graders and up – were in the gym going through workouts. The gym teacher walked by us, looked at L., and said, “L., why aren’t you in there with them?”

She just grinned.

The kid’s built quite the reputation already.

C. and L. are still in the midst of their sports seasons. Both continue to do well. C. is in a four-game run where she has not made an out[1] and L. is scoring goals at will.

But kickball ended two weeks ago. St. P’s ended the season with a game against St. B’s, the school that had beat them 27–2 earlier in the year. If that wasn’t a tough enough match-up, had our girls somehow pulled out the win, they would have to play St. B’s again the next day to break a first-place tie to determine who went to the tournament.

St. P’s got St. B’s out 1–2–3 in the first, then scored three runs in the bottom of the inning. Much better start than the first game, when no one reached safely until the third inning.

But it didn’t last. Those St. B’s girls are damn good and won 19–6. The St. B’s mom who kept score with me said that grade is filled with super athletic girls. Funny how talent sometimes pools like that. Our girls have a handful of good athletes, some that are ok, and some that are just out there. But the grade behind them is crazy athletic. Apparently they went through their kickball season not only undefeated, but with most games ended early because of the run rule. I’ve seen those girls in the library and some of them tower above M. and some of her classmates.

Anyway, we’ll see if this is M.’s final year of kickball. She wants to run cross country in the fall, which will require some work in the summer. She’s never run more than around the block, so I’m not convinced A) she knows what she’s getting into and B) she’s capable of running that far yet.

This was also, likely, the last time this group of girls will play together. Fifth and sixth graders play together, and the best girls are often grouped together. We’ve reached the point where talent is going to start moving girls in different directions.

Big, fat, daddy jinx for tomorrow’s game right there! ↩

The Other Two

April 28, 2015 / DB

C. got her own sports post last week. The sisters deserve updates, too.

We’re in the last week of kickball season. Baring a miracle finish (and collapse by another team), M.’s team will not make the tournament. They’re currently 5–1, but that one L was a 27–2 loss to a team they face again in the season finale. That game was brutal. It was a cold, windy, nasty day. St. P’s was missing five players (although they would not have made a difference in the outcome). And St. B’s is the school that knocked our girls out of the volleyball tournament last month. That B might stand for something other than the saint it is supposed to honor!

M. has had a good couple of weeks. One night she went 3–4, with three runs scored, and even fielded a ball in the outfield and got it to second for a force out, something that does not happen very often. Against St. B’s, our girls were getting no-hit (no-kicked?)[1] into the third inning before M. got on base and scored the first run of the day. And in her next game she was 3–3 with three runs scored. We’d still like her to kick the ball harder, but she’s improved a lot at the plate, and is beginning to get a better feel for how to play the field.

At practice last night, they were short several girls. In order to get the team some more fielding practice, the coaches called over C. and L. and let them kick and run the bases. They both played true to type. C. kicked the crap out of the ball twice – farther than M. has ever kicked it – but both times it was in the air and caught for an out. L.’s first kick was a short roller to one of the suicides[2], who fumbled the ball then over-threw first base. L. raced all the way around the bases for a classic Little League home run.[3] All the fourth graders were screaming and cheering for her and did their home run chant after.

While we were eating dinner, M. filled her role perfectly. She began explaining to C. that she might be able to get away with kicking the ball in the air when she plays kickball next year in third grade, but in fourth grade she’d have to learn how to keep it on the ground. She then jumped up from the table and demonstrated the different ways to throw the ball, how L. was breaking the rules by leading off before the ball was kicked, etc. At least it was done with love.

As for L., her soccer team is 2–0–1. Yes, a tie in U6 soccer. Worse, it was 4–4 on a night when L. could have easily scored 10 goals, and her teammates could have added at least half a dozen more. But the entire team kept kicking the ball just inches left or right. Their coach even yelled at them, “You guys are like Florida State! Always wide left!” L. did have a sweet, left-footed shot from about 20 feet out that I swear she was trying to curl into the goal. She just missed, though.

She made up for those misses Sunday. Her squad was playing a team full of five-year-olds. L. and the other six-year-olds on her team just destroyed these poor kids. Each time the other team kicked off, L. or someone else ran up, stole the ball, and took off for the goal. They were scoring a goal roughly every minute, with most of the minute taken up by the other team walking the ball back to mid-field and prepping to kick off again.

L.’s actual goal count is a bit uncertain. S. watched the first half of the game, while I was across the park at C.’s softball game. Then we switched at halftime of L.’s game. L. scored somewhere between 11 and 16 goals. Or maybe more.

After the game she had to go to a birthday party. But as soon as she got home from that, she put on one of her old soccer uniforms and ran around in that until shower time. For bed, instead of wearing pajamas, she put on yet another soccer uniform. Three uniforms in one day!

For her morning work one day last week, she wrote that she scored seven goals in her first game, and wanted to score 100 for the year. As crazy as that sounds…

Oh, and C.’s team has now won three games in a row, and she’s gone 1–3 in each of her last two games. She and M. both have games tonight, so hopefully I’ve not jinxed either one of them.

One more kickball story. Coaches always have trouble positioning outfielders. They always creep in toward the infield, are often not paying attention to what’s going on at the plate, and are prone to running the ball back in rather than throwing it. A few games back, St. P’s best kicker came up. The opposing coach was screaming at his centerfielder to move back. She took a couple tiny, tip-toed steps back. He yelled to back up more. Two more tiny steps. Finally, the coach roared, “LOOK WHO’S UP!!!” That did the trick. She took like five big steps back.

That was a wise choice. A. kicked an absolute rocket right at the centerfielder. It bounced once, went over her shoulder, and rolled to the edge of the parking lot. Had she not moved, I’m pretty sure the ball would have taken her head off. I bet that girl learned her lesson, though, and moves when her coach says to move.

It’s always high comedy to hear dads talking during kickball games and struggle with whether to use baseball/softball terms, or adjust them. “Who’s up to bat next? Or, um, to kick?” ↩

Suicides are the players who stand to either side of the pitcher. They have to play behind an arc that is about 15 feet from home. They either pounce on slow rollers or try to catch liners before they get smacked in the face. ↩

Little League home run: when a player circles the bases thanks to an error or other defensive error and thinks they hit (or kicked in this case) a home run when they actually got a single with a three-base error. ↩

Spring Sports

April 14, 2015 / DB

Several years back, as we were chasing likely just two toddlers around the yard, one set of our neighbors told us to enjoy those days. Because, they said, it wouldn’t be too long before our lives became this, and the husband pointed from our driveway, to the street, back to the driveway, back to the street. “You’ll be coming and going non-stop to practices, games, school programs.” They have two boys who are two years apart, both out of college now. But at the time they were still in the midst of high school sports. They spoke from experience.

Well, we’ve reached that stage.

Beginning last Monday, we are in a stretch where of the next 24 days, 21 have at least one kid activity on the calendar. Kickball, softball, soccer, First Communion related events. Swim team call out meeting. Study group for M.’s social studies project.

Several days have two events at two different locations. Last Thursday, for example, L. had soccer practice about 10 minutes from home. At the same time, M. had a kickball game 40 minutes away on the opposite site of Indy. Fortunately there is a family that has girls of the same ages, on the same teams, so we were able to split the transportation duties. Sunday I watched the first 15 minutes of L.’s soccer game then left to take M. over to her study group.

On top of the hassles of driving through construction zones and rush-hour traffic, there is the constant threat of bad weather endemic to the Midwest. Last Wednesday M. had kickball practice from 3:30–4:30, then C. had softball from 5:30–7. As we were driving home from kickball, the skies were darkening and the radar looked red and nasty to our west. I said to C., “I bet it starts storming right about the time we get to the fields.”

Sure enough, as we pulled up to the parking lot, her coaches were walking off the field waving everyone away. Then we raced back home and beat the hail into the garage by about 30 seconds.

At least M.’s kickball season only runs until May 1. If we had to do this for two full months, I might need some medications. Not that May is much easier.

We’re off to a good start, at least. M.’s team won their first kickball game by one run, scoring the winning run in the bottom of the sixth. They were down 8–2 early, had a four-run lead going into the sixth, then after giving up the lead got back-to-back doubles to get the win.

This season’s team is a little different that the past two seasons. Last spring they mixed the third and fourth graders so the third graders could learn the rules a but quicker. And in the fall, enough girls came out that there were two fourth grade teams. This spring, though, it’s just one team of only fourth graders. Which gives them 17 girls when everyone shows up. So the girls take turns playing in the field, but everyone kicks.

Based on one game, it also seems like the girls are better at fielding and throwing/catching at first base. You can’t dribble the ball to the pitcher and expect to automatically be safe at first. We’re desperately trying to teach M. how to put some ooomph in her kicks so she has a chance.

L. picked up where she left off last fall in her first soccer game. She scored seven goals, had two assists, and kept the other team from scoring any goals. We had hoped to move her up to U–8 this spring, along with two of her teammates from last fall. But the league kept all three in U–6 for another season. Our coach told the league commissioner that the kids were more than ready for U–8 and he was worried other parents/coaches were going to complain when our kids scored all the time. The commissioner insisted that would not be a problem. I’m not so sure.

C.’s first softball game is tomorrow. Because of weather, they’ve only had two practices. And about half the team has never played before. Which means tomorrow night should be very interesting. Based on practice, it looks like if you can get the bat on the ball, you will not only be safe, but you can run as long as you want. Not a lot of slick fielding in first and second grade softball. But getting the bat on the ball is easier said than done. C. made solid contact a couple times Saturday, so hopefully that will carry over to a game.

My biggest frustration with her is one common to any parent teaching a kid how to play base/softball: she always wants to catch with her glove facing up. I’m pretty sure I got corrected endlessly for doing the same thing 37 years ago. She can get her glove down on the ground, though, and has a decent arm.

L. begged me for a glove, too, just so she can throw the ball around when we go to C.’s practices. I got her a tiny tee ball glove that came with a cushy ball. Last night we were throwing it around and she did a great job. She has a good arm, but also struggled to catch. When she would get the ball in her glove, she had a look of amazement on her face after, like “How did I do that?”

I told her that I loved to play catch, my step-dad and I used to play for hours, and I hoped that at least one of the girls would learn how to throw/catch well enough to toss the ball with me. “I’ll play catch with you guys every night if you want to.”

“I’ll do it!” she said.

Of course she will.

Reporter’s Notebook

November 11, 2014 / DB

Well, the Hinkle Fieldhouse stuff was technically a lengthy reporter’s notebook entry. But I still need to get you caught up on the last month of work.

The final regular season football game I covered came over a month ago, the same night as game one of the ALCS as a matter of fact. My team was down 24–0 before the first quarter was over. It had poured rain all day and was still raining steadily with chilly temperatures. The jerseys were so muddy that we could barely read uniform numbers in the press box. So the stats guys, the clock operators, and I would all yell out who we thought made the tackle or the catch or had the run. If at least two people agreed, we decided to go with that player.

Things got really interesting at halftime when the opposing coaches climbed down from the roof to go join their team. The stats guys started yelling at them for running up the score. Which they kind of were. You don’t throw the ball downfield when you’re up by 50 and it’s not even halftime. Sadly there was no fight, which would have been the most exciting thing about the night.

Then I covered the CGHS boys soccer team through a few rounds of the state playoffs. They were really good this year, and I was set to cover them in the state championship game if they made it that far. Unfortunately, they got bounced in the semi-state round. Which was another new thing for me. The game was in Evansville, too far away to send a reporter. So I followed the game on Twitter and then called the coach as they bused home to get some details for the story. Oh, as I was following a pretty crazy 4–3 game on Twitter, the Royals were building, and then blowing, a lead in game four of the World Series. Symmetry. Or synergy. Or something.

Then two weeks ago I covered the cross country semi-state meet that was right up the road from my house, on the course where I have been running lately. It was pretty sobering to see the girl who won, who I’ve reported on for a couple years, her knock out a course that I run in just under 30 minutes in just over 18 minutes. And in the boys race, the winner just missed breaking 15 minutes.

I’ve also written one girls basketball preview and am in the midst of writing the boys and girls swimming previews.

But, in the spirit of burying the lede, the big news is that I began working for another paper last week. This is the county paper that covers the county I actually live in. I met the new sports editor when I was covering a team for my original paper that came north a month ago. We chatted, he gave me his email address and said to send him a message if I was ever interested in working closer to home.

Last Friday was my first assignment for him. I got to cover the Catholic school that’s right up the road in their football sectional championship game. It ended up being a really good game. I was actually covering both teams, so by the time the game ended (at 10:00!) and I had a chance to talk to both coaches, the extra hour this paper allows for deadline really came in handy.

This paper covers eight (I think) high schools, from the second-biggest in the state down to a 1A school, so it’s a similar spread to my other paper. Although up here the big schools have more high-end talent. My local high school sends kids to D1 in every sport every year. There are at least two guys playing in the NBA from schools I will follow. And it will be cool to get to cover, and learn more, about all these schools that are in my backyard as opposed to two counties away.

The bummer is this new paper does not pay very much. Not that my other paper does, but they certainly pay more and throw in mileage, so when I have to make a long drive at least the gas is covered.

But it’s a chance to get some more work, hopefully closer to home. If I can swing it, I’d like to keep taking assignments for both papers. I have seven years of knowledge and relationships built up down south. I’d like to keep those. And it will be nice to occasionally not have to leave 90 minutes before a game starts to get there on time. We’ll see how that all works out.

Oh, and the other aspect of working for this new paper is I’ve finally put my Twitter account to use. While using Twitter to send out scores was never discouraged by my OG paper, neither was it something they asked or encouraged us to do. Some writers did it; others did not. I just never tried to get it into my game night workflow.

But the new paper asked that we send out updates at least quarterly. So, dutifully, I did just that. As I got more comfortable jumping from the game to my stats to Twitter, I sent out a few in-game updates when big plays happened. The paper retweeted my stuff, so by the end of the night I actually had a new follower. I’m not ready to jump into using Twitter full time, but it was kind of funny to actually send things out when I’ve just been using it as a tool to read since 2008.

Finally, tonight I’m off to cover the opening night of girls high school basketball in the state. I’ll have the CG girls, who are ranked sixth and are always fun to watch.

Girls Games

September 17, 2014 / DB

And now for some girls sporting notes.

M. ended her kickball season last night. Her team got another big win (45-11 after trailing 9-4 to begin the second inning) to end their season at 6-1. Unfortunately, that was not enough to make the championship tournament. Only the four division winners go into the tournament. And their one loss came to a team that went 7-0.

That single loss was a bummer. The other team scored eight runs with two outs in the fifth and the St. P’s girls couldn’t recover, losing 26-19. One bad inning on defense away from the playoffs. Which I don’t think the girls really cared about. The coaches and their humble scorekeeper (me!) were bummed out. Especially since the 7-0 team pulled a bit of a fast one, getting one of the other teams from their school to forfeit rather than reschedule a rained-out game to ensure the St. P’s couldn’t catch them. There’s always some drama…

I think M. had a lot of fun this year. She got better, although we still need to work on her kicking and get her to understand her role in the field better. When she plays an infield position or in the outfield, she’s really good at getting to the ball, collecting it, and getting it back to the pitcher. Last night she played one of the suicide positions, the two players who stand by the pitcher and have to deal with most of the balls kicked in the infield, and was often at a loss at what to do.

The other two girls began their soccer seasons two Sundays ago. L. has scored five goals in each of her first two games and is up to her usual bad-assery. Even though she’s not yet six, I bet we could have moved her up to U8 this year and she would have been fine. But her team is all kids that are either in kindergarten with her at St. P’s, or kids who will go there next year, which she loves. She and L., who is in the other K class, have become fast friends. They’ve played together in both games and have terrorized the boys trying to stop them. When I’ve made it to school early for pickup while the K classes are still outside, I always see those two together organizing their classmates in some kind of activity.

The real fun is C.’s team, which as you may recall, I am coaching. As in head coaching. All by myself. Well, a couple dads who know soccer much better than I do but have to travel a lot are helping out when they can. But the planning of practices, setting the lineups, etc. is all on me. Which was thoroughly frightening at first, since I never played soccer and am doing it all by trial and error.

That’s compounded a little by our team having a lot of kids who either have never played soccer before, or have not played in several years. Fortunately, most of the kids are at least fast and like to run, which can mean a lot when you move to the bigger U10 fields.

Fortunately we had three weeks of practice before our first game, so I was able to get them used to each other and working on their skills. Still, when we began our first game, I realized we hadn’t spent nearly enough time on how to move the ball around the field. The goalies didn’t understand that they didn’t have to stand on the goal line to pass out to their teammates. The defenders didn’t understand how they had to work together, or how they were not tied to the penalty box when the ball went forward. The midfielders didn’t understand how to work together up front, or how to get back to help the defenders.

All that showed on game day as we lost 5-2, with all the goals against coming on plays where the defenders stood around and watched the other team fire on goal.

So we worked on that before the second game. And it appeared to pay off. We got a 5-1 win in week two, giving up the only goal in the last ten seconds of the game. The kids did better on every part of the field, we actually had some passing in the attack, and we thoroughly dominated possession.

The highlight, for me, was the first goal of the game. C. was one of our midfielders (We play two defenders, three midfielders because telling them we had two midfielders and one forward seemed to confuse them) and as she often does, got way ahead of the defense, but was out on the wing. She cut the ball into the box, there was some back-and-forth with the defense and our team as they all knocked the ball around, and eventually she collected it and fired it in. Dad got a little fired up. Not only was it her first “real” soccer goal – one that came with a goalie playing – but it was the first one for our family, as M. was usually playing defense in her U10 days.

We have two boys that are pretty fast and can shoot. We have another girl that isn’t as fast as C. without the ball, but with the ball she can fly up the field and knows how to shoot. We have a girl I was a little concerned about because she isn’t very fast and is very quiet, so I had a hard time telling if she was grasping everything. In our first game I put her in as a defender and she did awesome, getting in front of the ball and either taking it away or clearing it out each time she had a chance.

The best part is that almost all of the kids are always smiling and laughing. I think it helps that several of them don’t have much soccer experience. It’s literally a game to them and they are excited to get out and play. The boy who is probably our best player doesn’t have that same attitude, and I think it’s because he knows the game more and is thinking more about winning and losing. Which I can identify with, as I was hyper-competitive when I was a kid.¹

A month of practices and two games in, I’m feeling more comfortable. I still wish I knew better, instinctively, how to teach the kids game-specific stuff. But the dads who are helping out do a great job helping me there.

We play a team that is 2-0 this week. Hopefully I’ll have the kids ready.

“Was?!?!” my wife would say. I’ve mellowed but I still have my moments. ↩