Above: Coach Doug, Assistant Coach Shannon and Team Argentina.
Saturday was our long awaited soccer tournament, and unfortunately, it was ridiculously cold and windy that day. I had several parents ask me if the tournament would be postponed due to the weather - it was that cold. Several sports did cancel that day. But, the Y decided to go ahead with the tournament. So, the girls (and parents) had to bundle up.
Hats, gloves and long underwear were in order on that day...
When we arrived at the field, the girls were running around to keep warm...
It was bundle up time...
Here are the girls getting some instruction from one of the referees...
Now before you all read the rest of this post, I want to preface how proud I am of Team Argentina (players and coaches alike). This season, we only had three girls return (including Bri) from our previous season and everyone else was brand new. Despite having a lot of newcomers, Team Argentina dominated the west side division all season (12 wins, 1 loss, 1 tie).
Bri is going to stick with the Y for one more season (spring) and Doug will stay on as coach. We love our team so much (the girls are amazing) and Doug knows he will be able to teach/coach them another season. There are definitely some issues we have with the Y though, so we are trying to figure out what to do when Bri moves up to U10.
Our division is on the west side of the county. We only play west side teams throughout the season. We are then mixed in with the east side of the county when we go to the tournament. I'm not a fan of this at all. The east side of town is much more dense. There are many more people live in that area of town and there more girls are playing soccer there. There are more teams on the east side and more girls per team.
There were three brackets set up for the tournament on Saturday. Looking at the three brackets on quick scores, Team Argentina was definitely in one of the toughest brackets. In our bracket (the blue bracket), we were scheduled to play during the first two assigned times - 2PM and 2:45PM. There were 3:30PM games too, but that was our 'bye' game. The finals were set for 4:15PM.
We played the first game at 2PM - against a west side team and we won (4-1). Briana made a beautiful goal and an amazing assist. The girls looked fantastic that first game. Only one of our girls had not yet scored during the season, and we all kept rooting for her. Guess who made the very first goal?! When she scored, our whole team went bananas. I'm sure everyone thought we were crazy. ;) That seriously made the whole tournament for me.
Our second game was then against an east side team. Ugh. The east side team didn't have to play a 2PM game and came out fresh with 11 or 12 girls. We only had 8 girls on our team and we had already played one game. It was still so cold in the afternoon and very windy. Our girls were quite chilled and a bit tired going into the second game.
Sadly, that gave the other team an unfair advantage.
The east side team was amazingly good and their players were aggressive and skilled. It looked like they had been playing together for a very long time. Our girls played hard even when they were losing and weren't able to score. They never gave up (so amazingly proud of them). The fact that the other team only scored on us 3 times though (2 times legitimately - more on that in a minute) proves what a good team we have. But again, the girls came into the game with some handicaps which was frustrating. Playing the east side team so early in the tournament and losing to them that second game knocked our girls out of going to the final.
It just stings a bit. (I know I've probably been taking this harder than the girls and coaches.)
The other team scored three goals against us. One of their goals shouldn't have counted though. They got a penalty kick due to an error made by someone on our team. But, the other team didn't follow the rules for the penalty kick and scored unfairly (they did a direct kick into the goal when they were supposed to do an indirect one {Y rules} and our girls had never dealt with a penalty kick during the season, so they had no idea what was even going on). The ref didn't say anything about the direct kick and no one was allowed to object to any ruling on the field by a ref (which stinks because most of the refs are very young and learning to ref, so they make mistakes). So, we had to accept the call. The score should have been 0-2 not 0-3. It didn't affect the final outcome, but it still put salt in the wound.
With the way this tournament is set up, there were several teams from
the west side division (all of them lost to us during the season) that
ended up going home with finalist medals because they were in different
brackets (possibly easier?) under different circumstances. Our girls
went home with participation medals after dominating the west side the
whole season.
I really don't want to sound like a "poor sport." I just don't like the fact that our girls worked so hard (and won) all season and then had some things working against them in the end. I don't mind the girls losing - as long they play their hearts out and are on a level playing field. I don't like to see the girls lose when it seems like a bit of an unfair fight from the get go.
If there was any consolation, we did win one game, it was super cold so we could go home and get warm sooner by losing the second game, and the team we lost against did end up beating everyone else they played. No losses. They were really good.
The girls were a bit disappointed to lose the game, but after a few minutes of feeling kind of sad about it, they started smiling again and were happy about how well they did this season. They are rock stars - truly. Best girls team on the west side of town - period. Tournament or no tournament.
They all had a great attitude.
After the tournament, the girls ended up with 13 wins, 1 tie and 2 losses. That's an awesome season.
Doug with his awesome girls...
Next post ~ the end of the season dinner.
.jpg)
