Mother's Day game

Another exciting game! We are definitely playing in a flight that meets all my expectations. This team was quite competitive with one player who could pass humongous distances and another who could score. I had to adjust by putting Jack in one-on-one coverage against their scorer and alternating David and Dario in defense when Liam became injured. Sam not being there hurt a lot.

But David put a nice header in the goal to bring us to within one goal and the game was on. I noticed that we were walking around rather than running so I substituted players often. When I saw that the other team had no substitutes in the heat, I saw how we could win. I asked the boys to play hard until I substituted them, take a quick break and get back in. We tried Freddy and Ned at left forward, both of them played the position well and Freddy almost had a goal. I'll keep trying that to give them experience and hopefully awaken the goal lust hidden within. That gives me a chance to give Roberto a breather, especially since he can play left mid well also.

But the boys kept playing down to the level of their opponent, a phenomenon I've seen many times and it took a lot of yelling by me to get them to pick up the pace. Finally I pulled Jack off their scorer and asked Jake to guard him. This allowed a fresh set of legs to spur the offense on and we suddenly started to attack the goal. I pulled Dario and David back up to offense, added Roberto and Jarib and suddenly their goalie was under siege. A couple of missed shots and an offsides made it exciting but finally David was able to place another shot into the goal and we tied it up.

If the game had lasted another five minutes we should have been able to win it but coming out with a tie was pretty good also. We are leading the division considering the number of games we have played.

I'd like to continue to do what it takes to stay in this position within the flight. If it means your son gets less playing time when we are playing a tight game and more when we are winning or losing badly or vice versa, I hope you understand. My goal is to do as well as possible with this set of boys while giving as much playing time to each child as I can. Keep practicing and running to stay in shape and your playing time during the tight games will increase.

See you all Monday at practice.