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Force 00 Purple U13G Div B Winter 1 2011 |
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| U13G Div B Winter 1 2011 Standings |
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| Force 00 Purple's Schedule |
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Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
November 12, PSG
Prince Hamlet in his first soliloquy:
"O God, God,
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't, ah fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!"
Well, it wasn't that demoralizing, but....
The Force U12 took a 1-0 loss this early AM to an inferior side, the PSG Gators. The girls were playing shorthanded without the very active Annabelle and Christina, but this was a team they could have and should have beaten -- particularly when they need a win so badly.
The team certainly seems to need to somehow regroup at this point.
The girls played really well in the first half. Rhea put on an offensive clinic: beating players, distributing the ball, finding space, etc. When in the game Zoe absolutely controlled midfield. On the backline the girls did some very nice backpassing and even switching of the field. Grace had her second excellent game on defense. Kate came up with a great save off a free kick, extending to her full height to snag a hard, high bouncing ball.
The second half had its highlights: Jill was a notable spark on offense; Kate made one great diving save; Grace made a great run to interrupt a breakaway; and Zoe, in limited time early in the half, again dominated the middle.
But other than that nothing went particularly well.
The middle of the field was left all too open and clearing passes routinely went sailing past defenders who were put back on their heels. One of these balls skidded too close to Kate for a backpass and a Gator came up with the easiest goal she will ever get. Offensively, nothing got moving for the Force and girls struggled, again, to realize game situations. That is, they seemed unaware that late in the second half they were down 1-0 and needed a tie.
"O God, God,
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't, ah fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!"
Well, it wasn't that demoralizing, but....
The Force U12 took a 1-0 loss this early AM to an inferior side, the PSG Gators. The girls were playing shorthanded without the very active Annabelle and Christina, but this was a team they could have and should have beaten -- particularly when they need a win so badly.
The team certainly seems to need to somehow regroup at this point.
The girls played really well in the first half. Rhea put on an offensive clinic: beating players, distributing the ball, finding space, etc. When in the game Zoe absolutely controlled midfield. On the backline the girls did some very nice backpassing and even switching of the field. Grace had her second excellent game on defense. Kate came up with a great save off a free kick, extending to her full height to snag a hard, high bouncing ball.
The second half had its highlights: Jill was a notable spark on offense; Kate made one great diving save; Grace made a great run to interrupt a breakaway; and Zoe, in limited time early in the half, again dominated the middle.
But other than that nothing went particularly well.
The middle of the field was left all too open and clearing passes routinely went sailing past defenders who were put back on their heels. One of these balls skidded too close to Kate for a backpass and a Gator came up with the easiest goal she will ever get. Offensively, nothing got moving for the Force and girls struggled, again, to realize game situations. That is, they seemed unaware that late in the second half they were down 1-0 and needed a tie.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
U13G Div B Winter 1 2011 Standings |
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FRIDAY NIGHT
Technical training 6-7:30 in the Mini Dome at the Silverdome.
SATURDAY MORNING GAME
8:00 AM game, please arrive by 7:30. Wear WHITE, bring black, Field 1 PSG Gators.
| Force 00 Purple's Schedule |
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Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Something for Joey
Sports always involves some degree of nostalgia, the sometimes pleasant, sometimes painful aching for the past.
Parents love watching their children play soccer in part because it allows them to indulge in pleasant memories of their sporting past. This pleasure, however, can turn painful very quickly. Every parent has to watch out for the evil of living vicariously through their child, expecting their child to meet and exceed their own past.
Nostalgia incurs other risks. Bruce Springsteen warned all of America about indulging in their sporting past with his hit "Glory Days," the song about a baseball pitcher who "could throw that speedball by you, make you look like a fool boy" whose life had fizzled after high school sports. The pitcher can only talk now, boringly, of those "glory days." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inCC-PAggRA
Perhaps the worst kind of sports nostalgia, though, is the nostalgia that renders all sporting pasts better than the present. Things were better back then we like to believe, more pure, more innocent, more authentic. We remember idyllic hours of unsupervised baseball in the park, hockey without helmets on a frozen pond, or basketball games played in the dusk in a small backyard.
The film Hoosiers plays on this and oozes nostalgia in its very lighting and sounds.The film even defends, for one moment, what Springsteen's "Glory Days" critiques. When Barbara Hershey (one of my favorite all time actresses!!) asks head coach Gene Hackman why everyone gets so excited about a high school basketball victory Hackman says, convincingly, that many would "kill" to have just one moment in their lives when friends and spectators hoisted them on their shoulders. That is, it may only be high school sports glory -- but, for most, that is better than no glory at all in later life.
Why not indulge it?
This danger is inherent to all nostalgia. We almost always remember the past as greater. That the past wasn't greater is perpetually refuted by the simple fact we discover nostalgia in that very past we honor. That is, the past we imagine as being so great imagines their past as greater still. In Woody Allen's (a troubling figure for where this post is heading) recent film Midnight in Paris the lead character is nostalgic for the Parisian ex-patriot scene (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stein, et. al.) of the 1920s. The "shock" of the film is that he gets to go back there and even fall in love -- but the girl he falls in love with is nostalgic for her previous era -- the belle epoque of the late nineteenth-century.
Nestor, the oldest Greek hero in Homer's ancient epic poem the Iliad lambasts his colleagues -- Achilles, Odysseus, Agammenon, Ajax -- for being wimps! You aren't tough like we were says this character from the "oldest" western poem.
In getting overly nostalgic about the past we can miss the flaws that those living in a particular era saw with great clarity. The past, in short, can be pretty bad. This is true certainly for nostalgia and sports.
I remember watching *Something for Joey* at home as a made for TV movie and crying as a kid.
The film is about Heismann trophy winner John Cappeletti from Penn State. At the end of the film Cappeletti gives his trophy to his younger brother, Joey, who later dies from leukemia. In this last scene an already middle aged football coach, Joe Paterno, looks on at his star doing the right thing. This, one could imagine, as I did, even as a child indulging in nostalgia, was the way sports should be.
Tough, hard nosed fullback from working class family does everything right for a football program that was simple and pure (those plain black and white uniforms). Perfect.
Past meets present for me in that Paterno, who seemed old to me then, still coaches.
Parents love watching their children play soccer in part because it allows them to indulge in pleasant memories of their sporting past. This pleasure, however, can turn painful very quickly. Every parent has to watch out for the evil of living vicariously through their child, expecting their child to meet and exceed their own past.
Nostalgia incurs other risks. Bruce Springsteen warned all of America about indulging in their sporting past with his hit "Glory Days," the song about a baseball pitcher who "could throw that speedball by you, make you look like a fool boy" whose life had fizzled after high school sports. The pitcher can only talk now, boringly, of those "glory days." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inCC-PAggRA
Perhaps the worst kind of sports nostalgia, though, is the nostalgia that renders all sporting pasts better than the present. Things were better back then we like to believe, more pure, more innocent, more authentic. We remember idyllic hours of unsupervised baseball in the park, hockey without helmets on a frozen pond, or basketball games played in the dusk in a small backyard.
The film Hoosiers plays on this and oozes nostalgia in its very lighting and sounds.The film even defends, for one moment, what Springsteen's "Glory Days" critiques. When Barbara Hershey (one of my favorite all time actresses!!) asks head coach Gene Hackman why everyone gets so excited about a high school basketball victory Hackman says, convincingly, that many would "kill" to have just one moment in their lives when friends and spectators hoisted them on their shoulders. That is, it may only be high school sports glory -- but, for most, that is better than no glory at all in later life.
Why not indulge it?
This danger is inherent to all nostalgia. We almost always remember the past as greater. That the past wasn't greater is perpetually refuted by the simple fact we discover nostalgia in that very past we honor. That is, the past we imagine as being so great imagines their past as greater still. In Woody Allen's (a troubling figure for where this post is heading) recent film Midnight in Paris the lead character is nostalgic for the Parisian ex-patriot scene (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stein, et. al.) of the 1920s. The "shock" of the film is that he gets to go back there and even fall in love -- but the girl he falls in love with is nostalgic for her previous era -- the belle epoque of the late nineteenth-century.
Nestor, the oldest Greek hero in Homer's ancient epic poem the Iliad lambasts his colleagues -- Achilles, Odysseus, Agammenon, Ajax -- for being wimps! You aren't tough like we were says this character from the "oldest" western poem.
I remember watching *Something for Joey* at home as a made for TV movie and crying as a kid.
Tough, hard nosed fullback from working class family does everything right for a football program that was simple and pure (those plain black and white uniforms). Perfect.
Past meets present for me in that Paterno, who seemed old to me then, still coaches.
Weekly update from Alice!
THURSDAY NIGHT
Practice
6-7:30 in the Silverdome, let’s try to arrive 10 minutes early so the
girls can do their warm-up and be ready for practice at 6:00.
It has been cold in the dome so please have the girls dress appropriately.
FRIDAY NIGHT
Technical training 6-7:30 in the Mini Dome at the Silverdome.
SATURDAY MORNING GAME
8:00 AM game, please arrive by 7:30. Wear WHITE, bring black, Field 1 PSG Gators.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Renegades 1-1 tie, November 4
As a general rule, ties of the sporting rather than sartorial sort are often under rated. Conversely, ties of the sartorial rather than the sporting sort are often over rated. I went to graduate school for 8 or 9 years largely so I wouldn't have to wear a tie to work like my insurance salesman father who dressed everyday of his life as if he was auditioning for Mad Men.
When the Force U12 girls came away with a tie this early (7AM!) morning against Renegade 99 this general principle of life came to my mind. I can remember my father dragging me to St. Clair Shores Civic Arena for 5 AM hockey practice -- showered, shaved and in a jacket and tie.
This AM I only had to reach for a t-shirt and sweats. Razor? Who knows. Shower? Later. Gross, perhaps, but the 1-1 tie in the game felt great.
The girls needed something other than a loss much more than I needed a shave. They came out with great energy and good ball movement. They couldn't create any opportunities against the bigger and older "Renegades" (what's in a name?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWMSpNwd3aU) but they controlled the tempo. In the indoor league ("we play soccer indoors, not indoor soccer") the girls are playing slightly different positions. Today it seemed to pay off. Rhea, Grace, and Natalie played terrific on the backline supporting defensive stalwart enemy Emmi. Grace's ability to play balls out of the air and volley and distribute the ball were particularly helpful from this spot. Unfortunately, a slow knuckleball dribbled past Kate to give the Renegades a 1-0 lead in the first half. It is a tribute to her consistently excellent goalkeeping that when such a score happens -- as it inevitably will -- it looks so odd to spectators.
Kyra was right at home, however, at forward, and delivered a hard strike from a very tough angle to tie the game up pretty early in the second half. The girls added some late game pressure that forced the Renegade keeper to pick up a backpass from a defender but the referee overruled both linesmen and thus an opportunity was lost.
Ah well. That's how early it was. That's how good the tie felt. Force parents joked with the linesman about the blown call. A brand new season is certainly underway. Indeed, had the girls played 15 more minutes they would have come out of their stupor from the fall hazing and realized they were the far superior team. By, then, though all the good bagels would have been gone.
When the Force U12 girls came away with a tie this early (7AM!) morning against Renegade 99 this general principle of life came to my mind. I can remember my father dragging me to St. Clair Shores Civic Arena for 5 AM hockey practice -- showered, shaved and in a jacket and tie.
This AM I only had to reach for a t-shirt and sweats. Razor? Who knows. Shower? Later. Gross, perhaps, but the 1-1 tie in the game felt great.
The girls needed something other than a loss much more than I needed a shave. They came out with great energy and good ball movement. They couldn't create any opportunities against the bigger and older "Renegades" (what's in a name?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWMSpNwd3aU) but they controlled the tempo. In the indoor league ("we play soccer indoors, not indoor soccer") the girls are playing slightly different positions. Today it seemed to pay off. Rhea, Grace, and Natalie played terrific on the backline supporting defensive stalwart enemy Emmi. Grace's ability to play balls out of the air and volley and distribute the ball were particularly helpful from this spot. Unfortunately, a slow knuckleball dribbled past Kate to give the Renegades a 1-0 lead in the first half. It is a tribute to her consistently excellent goalkeeping that when such a score happens -- as it inevitably will -- it looks so odd to spectators.
Kyra was right at home, however, at forward, and delivered a hard strike from a very tough angle to tie the game up pretty early in the second half. The girls added some late game pressure that forced the Renegade keeper to pick up a backpass from a defender but the referee overruled both linesmen and thus an opportunity was lost.
Ah well. That's how early it was. That's how good the tie felt. Force parents joked with the linesman about the blown call. A brand new season is certainly underway. Indeed, had the girls played 15 more minutes they would have come out of their stupor from the fall hazing and realized they were the far superior team. By, then, though all the good bagels would have been gone.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Weekly update from Alice!
THURSDAY NIGHT
Practice 6-7:30 in the Silverdome, let’s try to arrive 10 minutes early so the girls can do their warm-up and be ready for practice at 6:00. Enter from the Opdyke side entrance, down the ramp. I will be there Thursday to help get them organized the first night.
FRIDAY NIGHT
Technical training 6-7:30 in the Mini Dome at the Silverdome, enter from Opdyke Road.
SATURDAY MORNING GAME
7:00 AM game, please arrive at 6:30AM (Ultimate opens at 6:30AM) Wear WHITE, bring black, Field 3 Renegade 99
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