Pirate Battle

Last Tuesday night, we had a parent vs. kids scrimmage for our soccer team, the Pirates. We played at a lighted field in Federal Way. We were actually on a sand field, which I wasnt too thrilled about initially. It was raining during the whole game, and it turned out the sand was probably easier to play on than the grass fields would have been - not quite as slippery, although the ball would skid pretty well as there wasnt the grass to stop it.
We started out going 7 parents against the 6 boys that were there. The boys were pretty excited to 'give it to us'. They held up pretty well for a while, although the parents team had some pretty good passing going on. I kept yelling at the boys to watch how well their parents were passing the ball around. Gunnar's dad, Bob, is quite athletic and got a couple of good shots in. Soon we were up 3-0. I could tell the boys were getting a bit dejected, so I told them they could pick one of the parents to come over onto their team. The parents ended up voting and sending me over. So, I held down the defense a bit tighter as I was guarding Bob. I started giving the boys more opportunities to get some shots, but the parents were not very compassionate. They were all playing for the win. At that point, I figured I needed to up the ante. I pushed forward a few times and scored a couple of goals. Then one of the boys got one and we were tied 3-3. The parents came back though and Bob scored a header off of a corner kick. We came back down and I scored another to match them. After that, we had been playing for over an hour, so we decided that the next goal would win. I was trying to get one of the boys to get the winning goal and passed a number of them through that were denied good shots. Finally, we came down the middle, and I was trying to direct traffic to get the boys to push through so I could lead them with a pass. Austin saw me pointing and made a good run toward the goal. I sent it through to him and he dribbled past one defender and put it in for the win! He was so excited. It seemed like a bigger deal to him to score against the adults than it did for the multiple goals he would score in his regular games. It was just as fun for me to be able to participate with him and work together to score that winning goal.
I have payed for all of that fun by being in pain for the past week. My knees were not happy at all with all of that action. My 'good knee' is now feeling worse than my surgically repaired one. :( It is probably worse after running against adults as opposed to playing against the 10 year-olds