I was blessed with a really good soccer team this year.  Unlike previous years when I served as assistant coach, this year I plunged in and served as coach.  I kept attendance of the kids, tried to have a schedule for each practice, knew in advance who was going to be missing for upcoming games and usually developed a rotation pattern before each game.

It was a great bunch of kids.  There were 4 repeats from last year’s team: Joey, Josh, Cole and Eric; and four kids moving up from U6: Trevor, Patrick, Dylan and Nick.  A few of them were fast and aggressive about scoring goals and we did not lose a game all fall season.  They got much better about passing, staying spread out and running to an open area.

We finished up strong with a makeup game on Thursday night and our final game on Saturday in the rain and mud. The team scored several goals including those by Josh, Cole, Joey, Dylan, Eric and Trevor.  Eric’s goal was a looping kick distance from the goal that sailed over the heads of the defense, bounced high in front of the goal and when in.  When asked if he was shooting for the goal or passing to Joey, Eric stated that he was shooting.

After our final game we had snacks, gave out kudos for the 4 kids who made 12 of our 13 practices and games (Eric, Trevor, Patrick and Dylan) and 1 who had perfect attendance (Nick).  I handed out a collage of action photographs that Kathryn had taken from various games.