My daughter’s soccer team (TCYSA U-14 Lady Reds) finished up their season this past weekend at the NC Soccer State Cup down in Jacksonville, NC.  We played two games on Saturday which we lost 2-0 and 1-0.  We were supposed to play yesterday as well but the skies opened and the fields were flooded by 1:00 and our game was scheduled to begin at 2:00.  The rules stated that if the fields were unplayable but the kids weren’t in danger (i.e. no thunder and lightning) then games were to be decided by penalty kicks.  Unfortunately for us all the parents on our team decided that since we were out of contention and the weather forecasts were dire they would high-tail it home.  So we three coaches showed with the five players riding with us and proceeded to forfeit a shootout since we didn’t have the minimum of 7 players required to start a game.  Needless to say a real downer to end the season.

On the positive side the eight of us had found a nice little house to stay in for the weekend at Emerald Isle.  The girls got to have some fun at the beach and we all had a couple of nice dinners out, first at an Italian restaurant on Friday night and a Mexican restaurant on Saturday night. 

Sunday started out inauspiciously and just went downhill.  I cooked up some bacon for breakfast and put the grease in a coffee cup by the stove.  Mac, the head coach for our team, thought it was his cup of coffee and proceeded to take pretty good slug before he realized his mistake.  Luckily the grease had cooled so he didn’t burn himself, but he managed to swallow enough that he felt greasy for the rest of the day.  He claims he didn’t even have to use shaving cream when he shaved.  I was in the shower when this went down, but I’m told that he made some rather spectacular retching sounds.

We had to be out of the house by 12:00 so we packed up and drove through the rain to the soccer fields about 1/2 hour away.  We got there in time to see our sister team, the TCYSA U-14 Gold team play a game in monsoon conditions.  They scored a goal and led 1-0 at half when the refs called the game due to conditions.  We hung around for another hour until they determined that the games would be decided on penalty kicks, then waited until 2:15 when they officially declared a forfeit since we only had the five girls.  Our other sister team the TCYSA U-14 Lady Royals had their shootout on the next field over so our girls cheered them on to a win, which means they are through to the semi-finals in Greensboro next weekend.

One of the problems our parents had, and one reason I’m sure they didn’t feel a real need to stick around yesterday, is that our team was put in a group with two other teams from our own league, the Royals and CCSC Flames.  That meant that we went to great trouble and expense to play teams we’d already played several times this year, and since we were out of contention after losing to Royal in our first game and we were scheduled to play the Flames on Sunday there wasn’t a lot of motivation to stick around. Originally we’d been scheduled to play teams from other leagues, but the week before the tournament they changed all the groupings.  We complained to the State folks and they informed us that it was done by seeding.  I’m not sure how they seed teams from different leagues because quite honestly there’s almost no way of knowing if the best team in one league is better than the mid-ranked team from another league because there’s definitely a disparity in competition levels from league to league.  Our feeling is that one of the great things about State Cup is that you get the chance to play teams you haven’t seen before and styles of soccer that are different from the league you play in.  Once you’ve rewarded the top two teams from each league for a good season record it really doesn’t matter what you do with the rest of the teams in terms of seeding so a priority should be given to getting the teams to play against fresh opponents.

In the end we had a fairly successful season.  Our girls had a winning record despite almost half of them never having played Challenge level before.  I’m looking forward to some weeks without practices to run to, and weekends full of games.  Hopefully the girls enjoyed themselves and learned a little something, and we’ll see how things go in the Fall.

Oy, tryouts are in less than three weeks.