This week marks the end of another season of football in our household – American and Association. For us hick Americans, association football is just a fancy way of saying soccer. Of course, shouldn’t a game called football be played with only your feet? Just asking.
It’s been a fantastic season of soccer this year for Mandy. Her team of 13-15 year olds, the Roos (or the Kroo), finished in second place in the Lincoln Spirit Soccer league. I’ve bragged of this before, but Mandy won the first game of the season for her team. The game was scoreless until close to the end of the game. Mandy pounded a kick past a goalie -- with her left foot – scoring the only goal of the game. It was fantastic. There was screaming and jumping up and down. And I think Mandy and her teammates were pretty excited too.
I’m not exactly sure what came over Mandy the last couple of years. When she first started playing the game in kindergarten, she was not the brawler she is today -- far from it. In fact, when her team went from regular, YMCA soccer to Spirit soccer, the coach told her she might not make the team. On the field Mandy was just too nice. She was one of those players that when someone came up and took the ball, she would back off, as if to say “Oh, you want it? OK, you can have it.” But the team needed one or two subs to warm the bench, so they kept her on the Kangaroos and she got some play time and stood in as goalie when needed. Some years you just need a warm body to stand in the goalie box in the hopes that the ball might accidentally bounce off the goalie when kicked that direction.
Then things changed. I credit the British Soccer Camps. Mandy is one of those examples of a player that just needed a chance to blossom and come into her own. That’s why her dad knows you can never stop teaching every single kid on the team the basics and skills of the game. Because you don’t know who it is suddenly going to “click” for and who is going to grow into a strong player. Some of the girls on Mandy’s team who were the real early standouts just stopped progressing. They were happy with how well they played, and they never really extended their skills. These girls are now very happy that Mandy stayed on their team. They know Mandy will charge up the field, hell on wheels, and take out any girl who stands in her way. Needless to say, “OK, you can have it,” has a whole new meaning for Mandy on the soccer field.
Mandy absolutely loved, loved, loved the British Soccer Camps she attended. She was always signed up for camp in the absolute hottest part of August. Some years the temperature was up in the 100s at 5:30pm when camp started. But she didn’t seem to mind. She always came home grinning. The coaches gave her loads of positive feedback and taught her all sorts of skills on the field that helped her have loads of confidence. And it didn’t hurt that the coaches were hot and talked with British accents. She used to giggle about how they would say “On the come, girls” and how they pronounced “Ah-mahn-dah.” Last year the coaches picked on her the last day of camp, dumping their water jugs on her head (at least those tall enough to reach that high). I think they enjoyed her happy attitude and smiling face, and couldn’t believe this tall lanky girl would prefer soccer over basketball. Go figure.
She loved her British coaches and they loved the kids. Every year Mandy and one of her friends would make the coaches nickname bracelets of who the girls thought the coaches resembled. This year Mandy made one of the coaches a bracelet that said “Cody Simpson.” In his beautiful British accent he asked Mandy “Is this Cody Simpson good looking?” Mandy, boof that she is, quickly replies, “Oh yeah. He is totally hot.” Then realizing what she just said, she slaps her hand over her mouth as the coaches all laugh and high-five. She may be tough, but she is still a blonde in a brunette’s body.
After the summer camp, this year Mandy also signed up to do a once-a-week British camp session on Friday evenings. Coach Marty is an awesome coach. He was even wearing the bracelet she made him at summer camp on the first day of the fall individual camps. He said she was “a pleasure” to have at camp on the last day. She took a picture with Marty, and I think she put it on her Facebook page. What a great guy. Mandy can do a perfect imitation of his voice. She loves how he pronounces her name and attempts to uses American slang in his British accent. She laughs, however, when he attempts to call the players “Dude” during practice. This, she says, is just wrong. It’s not natural.
It really was the result of the British soccer coaches’ aggressive coaching and love for the sport that has made all the difference to Mandy the past couple seasons. I don’t know if brawler is the right term, but Mandy has become quite aggressive on the field. As opposed to hockey, nobody throws down their gloves and fights on the girls’ soccer fields. But Mandy is the player the teammates look to if they need somebody to take on a really pushy player on the other team. She splits her time during the game playing offensive attacker and defender. This Thursday’s game there was a really aggressive attacker that Mandy had to mark up on during the first half of the game. During the second half of the game Mandy played attacker, but then traded back with the girl who was playing defender against this aggressive attacker. I asked her why she did that (because I really wanted to see her score a goal). Her answer was that the other girl just wasn’t covering that aggressive player hard enough, MOM. Well, OK. I would never have imagined that coming out of her mouth when I watched her ride the bench a few years ago.
And when it comes to playing co-ed games, all bets are off. My baby is tough. Last year at soccer camp there was a seventh-grade boy who was pretty good, who liked to goad her. (I’m sure this is seventh-grade-boy speak for “I think you are cute so I am going to pick on you a lot.”) During one of the scrimmages, they both went after the ball. I watched my baby lay that boy out flat. And she walked away smiling. A similar situation happened at the NELHS soccer jam Friday. Mandy was playing defender and one of the eighth-grade boys was driving the ball into the goal. Mandy’s brawler instinct kicked in, they collided, and she gave him a shoulder shove that laid him out on the ground, right in front of the goal post. And he laid there for a while. I’m not sure if he was hurt, or if it was his pride, getting laid out by a girl. She should have, of course, helped him up -- and in true American football fashion – given him a slap on the butt to send him on his way. At least, that’s what Rick’s assistant football coach says. What eighth grade boy wouldn’t appreciate that?
Sometimes I wonder if this tough, aggressive exterior is a good thing. The other day she said she almost punched a sixth-grade football boy in the mouth for calling one of her best friends a freak. (Not the same footballer who she told to “talk to the booty, the hands off duty.”) Good thing this boy knew when to cut bait and run. It’s true, sports have given her a load of confidence that she is going to need once she hits high school. And it will probably be OK if she can keep it contained. I’d rather have to ask her where to direct phone calls to Krush’s sister’s booty than calls from angry parents. We may have to work on this.
So Mandy’s soccer team ended their season today with a record of 6 wins and 2 losses. They got beat this afternoon by the other top team in the league. It was a super hard loss, because Mandy’s team would have been first in the league if they had won. Sometimes it seems second place can be so much harder than last place. We discovered this last year in volleyball when Mandy’s team took second in a volleyball tournament. Coming so close, but losing in the last few minutes is a heart-breaker. You can tell yourself all you want that you beat all those other teams, but it doesn’t stop the tears. Today there were quite a few Roos streaming tears as they walked off the field. Coach Scott gave out a lot of hugs, and a lot of girls had their daddys’ arms around their shoulders. The girls played incredibly, with awesome passes and headers and they looked like a grown-up soccer team. I guess it is something to motivate them in the Spring season. As Joe told his sister tonight, you just can’t win them all.
And today was the last day of Lincoln
I’ve been so proud of how my little guy has played this season. He plays on the B team with mostly seventh and eighth graders. He is just a little sixth grader, so he should be an awesome lineman once he gets to the eighth grade. And he is going to need to be. I’ve seen those A-team eighth graders at the scale waiting to weigh in. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, on the Runza team I saw two boys with full beards. And those were the guys who chose not to shave that day.
But Joe often plays against bigger, older boys. A lot of the time he lines up against guys with double-dots who are about a head taller than he is. Today was a prime example. The guy across the line was a head taller and a lot wider. The first time Joe crashed into him, Joe bounced off him like a rubber ball. But then he remembered to get low and blocked him out. I get nervous, but he always says the bigger they are, the harder they fall. I think he has a secret pride that he can throw down with the big boys and get right back up.
Of course that doesn’t always happen. Joe’s Assurity B team often scrimmages with the Assurity A team. At one practice, one of the offensive lineman on the A team hit Joe so hard he went flying backwards through the air, landing flat on his back. Joe said it totally knocked the wind out of him and so he just laid there for a while. Joe came home after another scrimmage with the A team with a migraine because this same offensive lineman kept hitting him so hard. Consequently, Mandy is seriously crushing on this A-team lineman. I’m not sure if it is because of how he is built, how he can hit, or the fact that he can lay out her brother. It’s probably a little of all three.
Of course, as I’ve mentioned in a previous blog, Joe is a beefy boy who can hold his own. In fact, he should be playing with one green dot on his helmet, although he seemed to make it through the season dodging this tag. If you weigh above a certain weight limit for the level team you are playing for, you either have one dot (which means you have to play on the line) or two dots (which means you have to play on the line one direction, offense or defense). When Joe went through the scales at the first game, the guy running the scales took one look at how short Joe is and waved him through. Joe didn’t argue, although the weight limit on B for a single dot is 145. And Joe is 154. At the second game, the guy running the scale hesitated a bit when Joe came in. He stopped Joe and asked if he had a dot. Joe, honest as the day is long, said “well, they didn’t give me one last week.” And the guy waved him through. Well, he can’t say he lied.
This week Joe’s coach let Joe spend some time in on the defensive line. At practice he was breaking through his own offensive line, so he got to try his hand at messing up the offense, instead of protecting it. My fear was that Joe would break through the line and then just stand there looking around, as if to say, well I made it this far, now what? But he did OK. He even broke through and messed up a play or two on the other side. No quarterback sacks, though. Oh well, there’s always next year.
I should also mention Rick’s D team here somewhere. The Rookie and D teams finished their season last week. The Assurity white D team finished their season 5 and 2. Rick and his offensive-coach Brian spent the season doing a lot of yelling and a lot of pushups. Of course, you’ve got to do a lot of that when you are dealing with fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade boys. Rick and Brian are typical football coaches. If the boys mouthed off, goofed around, or just didn’t listen, the boys ran another lap. Or, they did another dozen diamond pushups. And the coaches were right there with them, doing the pushups and scrimmages with the players. (You should see Rick’s biceps.) The coaches, of course, were the biggest kids out there.
Mandy and I enjoyed coming to several practices to watch Rick and Brian drill the fundamentals of tackling and passing and catching over and over again. We had our favorite players. Of course we enjoyed the football studs on Rick’s D team, like Appleget, who could just take the ball and fly down the field. But we also loved several other little guys because of their determination. We loved little Morrison, the second-string nose tackle. He was short and little and round with the cutest freckles and glasses. When he got knocked down, he just rolled and bounced right back up. In fact, sometimes he would run and fall down for no reason, and then bounce back up and keep running. Nothing kept him down, or dampened his spirits. We also loved little Pinkerton, or Pinky. The boy is a repeat D-team player, mostly because he is in the sixth grade and 70-pounds soaking wet. So what does Rick do? Rick puts him in the middle of his defensive line. Pinky army crawls his way through the offensive line and either sacks the quarterback or really messes up their plays in the backfield. This is also the player that never forgets. He reminds Rick that he owes the team a dozen diamond pushups for causing a penalty for sending too many players out on the field. He is somewhat obsessive/compulsive, so Rick puts him in charge of getting out and putting away the kicking T. And he never lost it all season. Pinky also is the guy on the team who has the audacity to pancake each of the coaches when they were scrimmaging with the team. This boy takes no prisoners. Heaven help his mother.
So it was with a somewhat heavy heart that I approached this Sunday, which will end both our football and our soccer seasons. We packed up the folding bag chairs and the water bottles. We threw in a couple blankets and sweatshirts. And I took my pictures. There are pictures of the team, pictures with their coaches, and pictures with their best friends. It’s a day you want to make sure you’ve got your battery charged with plenty of memory space. And guess what? I even had room to take a picture of Krush’s sister’s booty for a football player or two. Her hand is off duty. We seriously don’t want anybody getting punched.
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