Soccer Saturday ...

Okay, for the rest of fall, all Saturdays are "Soccer Saturday" but I guess that is just the way it goes. DD is loving her team, and we are getting a kick out of watching her (and her team) play. We have seen DS#1 and DS#2 progress through "Bumble Bee Ball" to the passing games that they play and now we get to see DD play, well, "Bumble Bee Ball." In truth, the game she and her teammates play is VERY good for 7 year olds. Right now their team only competes with older teams (or boys' teams) because there isn't another girls' team in her age group. Today she played against a "U9" girl's team and the teams played to a 2-2 tie. In fact, her team was ahead for much of the game.

We get a HUGE kick out of watching her strange combination of "girliness" and determination. As you can see here, the competition was just SLIGHTLY larger than DD, but she (eventually) found a way to hold her own.

After DD's game was over I rushed everyone home and my mom (whoops! I haven't posted that Grandma is in town, I'll have to talk about that tomorrow!), DS#2 and I headed out to San Marcos (about an hour from here) for his game. As his team manager I knew that the BEST we could do was "Iron Man" soccer due to illness. Right now we play 8v8 so that meant having 8 boys on the field for the entire game. Well, we started with 7, the 8th showed up 5 minutes into the game and that was a big help. Without subs the boys played to a 1-1 tie. We play this team again later this year and with a few subs I think it will be a very different outcome. I don't know why I like this picture so much, I didn't quite catch the shot where he hit it with his head, but it does show how hard he was working (he is in dark blue, #17).

The drive back was difficult as we had to go far out of our way to avoid a major construction-related traffic jam. Fortunately, we knew about it in advance so I could adjust our route. Once home, I had 45 minutes to have lunch (at 4:00 PM) before taking DS#1 to his 6:00 PM game.

DS#1's team has had some difficulties the past few years, but this year has looked very different. This means something HAS to happen, Murphy's Law appeared to be in effect. We have enough injured boys, and sick boys that we could only start with 11 (for full 11v11 FIFA rules). The other team started with 10. We rapidly hit 10 as one of our boys was truly simply so sick he couldn't play any longer. We did, however, win this game but not without some serious problems with one of the parents from the opposing team. Truly sad reaction and some of us suspect the gentleman in question might have had a tad to drink before the game.

Tomorrow I will drive DS#1 to Laredo, TX, for another soccer game. My dear wife is on-call tomorrow but my mother came to town and will stay with the younger children. I will miss them, particularly DS#3 who needs this mention here as my dear wife snapped a picture of us walking along the sidelines.