Soccer Tournament Fall 2008

What a day we had last weekend!

Saturday the 15th was Mikey's soccer tournament. We were lucky enough to get the first game at 8am. And it was COLD! It was in the 40s all morning, and VERY windy. Good thing Mikey got in a hearty breakfast first! (Notice the filled water bottle in the foreground... got to stay hydrated! ...and the vitamins in the background... got to have plenty of energy to win a soccer game!

As I mentioned, it was REALLY cold out there. Everybody was totally bundled up... even the kids (and Cathy!) You could barely tell which team was which, since most of the kids had jackets on over their uniforms! But the parents were all in good spirits and ready to cheer. The kids played a great game, and won the first game pretty easily!

Coach White had brought a ton of hot dogs, and all of the parents had brought stuff... chili or chips or drinks or plates and cups. Our second game was at 11, so we had a couple of hours to wait, so we froze for a while and drank hot chocolate, and then Coach White and one of the dads grilled the hot dogs. The kids weren't probably getting that cold... they were kicking soccer balls around the entire time! One of the families had brought a big blue tent with a "wind tarp" but it was so windy that the tent was in danger of blowing away, so we wound up taking the wind tarp down!

After we had lunch it was time for the next game... the kids played great soccer, and again won easily. Everybody was charged up and ready for the next game! Unfortunately, the next game wasn't scheduled to start until much later, so Coach told us we could go home and rest if we wanted to and they would call us with the final time later.

Cathy was a trooper through the whole thing... she had been having some back trouble the week before, but she wanted so badly to be there that she came out and sat in the camp chair anyway. We picked up Hannah from Meme's (where she had gone to stay warm and out of the wind) and went home to rest, and Cathy didn't come out for the late game.

Mrs. Coach White called us and told us that the game was scheduled for 5:00! We knew that sundown was around 5:30, and so we knew that we were probably going to finish the game in the dark. As you can tell from the picture at left, which I took at the beginning of the game, it was after 5 and it was twilight when we started playing! Here's an action shot from the middle of the game. The soccer ball was dead center in this shot:



Can't see what's going on? Neither could we.

The kids played hard, but they were out-played and lost this third game. The tournament was double-elimination, though, which means that they weren't out of the running yet! In that kind of tournament, you have to lose twice to be eliminated. So we had another game to play the next day!

Fortunately for us, we did not wind up playing the first game the next day, or even the second or third. Our game was scheduled for 1pm, which meant that we would be able to go to church for one service and still have plenty of time to get out there for the game. So that's what Mikey and I did. The kids played well in their game, but ultimately they were eliminated. They finished in fifth place out of a league of 14 teams. Not too shabby!

Here's a picture of the Foot Action Soccer Fall 2008 league Outlaws:



And here's Mikey with his medal:



See pictures from the whole weekend here!