A Soccer Champion
Madison and Drew both had soccer (even though they missed a big chunk of the season to Echo). Madison’s age group does playoffs, so on Saturday we played our game.
First shot on goal for the other team was a slow-moving ground ball. Our keeper went to kick it and missed and the ball slowly, painfully, rolled into our goal. We never recovered. That set us up to play in the 3rd/4th place match on Tuesday.
Monday night we get a text from the coach. The team that beat us was playing a ringer. All of their goals came from one kid who wasn’t on their roster, so they were disqualified and we were moved up to play in the championship match!
On Tuesday we are playing our hearts out. The kids can dribble and pass, but they can’t shoot worth a darn. Every kid on our team begs to play defense, which is the opposite of every other team. After half a dozen shots on goal we finally net one. 1-0. Blood in the water. We’re PUMPED!!
We have a bunch more shots on goal, nothing is falling, and then a ball gets away, down the sideline. Both our defenders sprint out to the side, which is really dumb. Just protect the goal! They both get burned. The player runs down the sideline, approaches the goal from the side with no angle to make a shot. Our keeper is the coach’s son, who does a good job, and the ball goes right through him and in. 1-1. We’re crushed. Our hopes and dreams demolished. We knew we lost our first round and shouldn’t be in the final to begin with. Madison subs out because she can’t see through her tears. She’s sitting slumped and dejected in my chair giving me angsty teenager snappy responses to my questions and encouragement. Finally I’m like “sub this girl back in!” so I can have my seat back.
Madison gets the ball with only one defender to beat. She beats them easily, dribbling past them. Her and the goalie 1v1. Her shot misses wide by 2 feet. Undeterred she runs to the dotted blue line and waits. The keeper always passes to his left side. Maddie cheats over to the left side, ball comes straight to her. She bumps it past all the defenders, kicks it and the keeper stops it. The referee announces “5 minutes of golden goal!”
Our coach loses her mind. Our team doesn’t even know what that means. Next goal wins. We start screaming “next goal wins” from the sideline. Our team looks to the sideline to hear coach, and the ball passes into our half of the field. Our defenders do their regular move of abandoning their post to chase the ball. I can’t watch. I’m screaming as loud as I can to protect the goal. You could almost hear me over the sound of every other parent yelling something at their kid.
One minute of golden goal remaining. We get the ball out. A quick throw, our best scorer has the ball, pushes forward, dances past roughly 14 defenders and kicks the ball past the keeper for the win. What a rollercoaster. From “eliminated to losers bracket” to “soccer champions” overnight.
AdyEndrus, posted on October 6, 2023 Friday at 1:02 am Leave a Reply
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