Corwin and Charles’ soccer games this week were too close in time at different parks for me to see both of them. Mom and Alice watched Charles while I went off to the distant park with Corwin.
Mom tells me that Charles game did not go so well. It was dominated (as games that age frequently are) by one particularly good kid on the other team. He was a big aggressive and the referee didn’t reign him in very well. Charles and another goalie got kicked while grabbing the ball, in one case the kid literally kicked the ball out of the goalies hands and not only wasn’t there penalty but the goal was counted. I don’t think better refereeing would have changed the outcome but it would have meant a bit less damage and stress for the kids on the receiving end. Charles had a good game, playing a lot of goalie and making lots of saved, one quarter basically spent taking shots over and over from the good kid.
Corwin’s game didn’t go particularly well either, although they managed to pull it together enough at the end to get a tie at 2-2. To me the kids just didn’t seem very on. The defense was a bit weak. Corwin had a number of good saves and clears but he just wasn’t hustling in to positions enough to make more of them. The offense wasn’t getting the deep penetration they needed to score. There would rarely be more than one kid in the opponents outer goal box during attacks and at this level of play, one kid going in is not a recipe for good scoring. The other team, however, was playing well and frequently had 2 or 3 kids in the box on their attacks. In the end the coach sent in some kids who normally play up to drive in a score to keep it from being a loss.
Poor Jake was the goalie for both opponent scores. Both were very nice scores, one right over his outstretched hands, just at jumping fingertip level, the kind of shot that just can’t be stopped. The other score was from the attack pressure. Jake stopped the initial shot but it bounced off him and rolled along in front of the goal. The other team had a player in the box who then just popped it in, which of course is the reason you try to put players in the box. Corwin’s team had one good score, the same sort of just over the fingertips shot against their goalie, and another which seemed more a bit of luck but sometimes that happens too.
