This past weekend was largely spent on the soccer fields at the Sara Lee Complex and Hine Fields here in Winston-Salem.  My daughter Erin’s soccer club, Twin City Youth Soccer Association, played host to the ChallengeFest, which is a mid-season tournament for "Challenge" level teams.  All the kids played four games in two days and by the end I can tell you that all of our girls were fried.

Our girls went 2-2, winning two games against teams from our Challenge League (teams for Davidson County and Statesville) and losing 2-1 on Saturday to a team from the Trianle area and 3-1 yesterday to a team from Clayton.  The two losses came in the afternoon games (second games of the day) and in both games our girls played with only one sub due to injuries and our opponents had at least four subs each.  Both teams were as skilled as any team we’ve played this year and our girls took a 1-0 lead into the last 20 minutes of both games before running out of gas and giving up some late goals.  All in all our girls played very well and "left it all on the field."

A couple of highlights for our family: Erin scored her teams goal in the 2-1 loss on Saturday, and yesterday she showed a little fire towards the end of the afternoon game.  The Clayton team played a more physical game than our girls are used to and the ref let most of the pushing go unabated so our girls were getting pretty frustrated.  Erin had the ball near the sideline right in front of our bench and after getting the treatment from one of the more aggressive players on the other team she screamed at her. I believe she said "Stop pushing you idiot!"  Then she immediately felt guilty and not long after that I saw her fighting tears as she was playing.  Personally I was proud of her for not retaliating physically, which is what her old man would have done in the same situation, and I have no problem with her venting.  The name calling was understandable but still not necessary, but since she already felt guilty I didn’t feel any need to say much about it, especially when I would have used much more colorful language in the exact same situation after administering physical redemption as well.  I was VERY happy to see that she had some fire in the belly.

All in all it was a good weekend, but will someone explain to me why our girls were playing in 90 degree heat on October 7?  At this rate we’re going to be hanging out at the pool on Christmas.