BoldlyRide

The girls had their first soccer game last night. They played a boys team and got trounced. Our star player scored four goals but nobody else on the team scored. Defensively our goalies blocked about ten shots on goal, unfortunately there was an equal number of unblocked shots. The game was really quite fun to watch, but not that fun to coach. One girl, the smallest on the team, would run along near the ball and then veer away before contact to let the other team have the ball. If no one else was around, she would kick the ball back toward our own goal -- either way she was a great benefit to the boys team. We worked on kicks by the goalie in practice, relentlessly -- trying to get the goalie to get the ball to the side rather than to the middle of the field where the other team would just kick it straight back in to the goal. After the boys scored a handful off that move the goalie remembered to get it to the side. Two really good players on our team were out of town or unable to play because of injuries -- so we only had one substitute and our girls were completely exhausted. Almost all of them were whining to come out so they could rest. The best we could do was bring out one and shift the others around to a different position. Although for two or three of the girls it didn't seem to matter what position they were assigned, they always went to the same part of the field or just ran wherever they felt like.