Soccer Game #2

Wow.
Wow!
The Wild Cats played an AWESOME game yesterday afternoon.  Game 2 was against the other girl team in our Pee Wee league, so we were a bit more evenly matched on the aggressiveness factor, but even that wasn't half of the story.  All 8 of the girls we had today hustled even more than they did Saturday, they all did a great job shaking off the bumps and hits (and believe me, we were running triage there in the third quarter), and they all really followed up their kicks on the goal and didn't just let the other team's goalie pick it up.  We scored three goals (M had one of them) and 3 or 4 almostgoals (M had 2 of those off the goal post), and all of our goalies did an excellent job pressing up on the attackers and grabbing the ball when they could, they only allowed 2 goals.

There was one girl on the other team who was pulling jerseys and grabbing and pushing her way through the herd, and the Wild Cats were none too please about it.  A few got hurt because of it - scraped knees and hands, falling and other players falling over them.  A few of the girls, M included, were pretty peeved about it and at one point in the second quarter, with 2 girls out, they were ALL complaining about it.  Fortunately the other coach had seen the play and taken the player out, so I just told the girls to keep trying hard and run faster and kick harder than the other team.  At one point later in the game with the rough player back in, she knocked a Wild Cat down and M helped her up and told her to keep going.  It was cute.  By the end of the game I had three players encouraging the others and everyone looking out for their teammates.  It was cute and needless to say I was happy to see it.  The rest of her day M kept talking about her "Wild Cat teammates".  Hopefully this was a step towards building some good, fun team unity.

At the end of the game, after we did high fives and "good game" with the other team, a bunch of the moms made a tunnel with their hands and cheered and shouted "Great job, Wild Cats" and the girls ran through the cheer tunnel.  It was cute and they were super excited by it.  They knew they'd done a great job, even if they didn't know who won (and yes, there are a few on the team who keep score ~ hee).

The first weekend of games was a real eye opener, and showed that they could really hustle and showed what we need to work on in practice tomorrow.  I hope they come to practice feeling good about their games and wanting to get better.  For the most part they all seemed to really enjoy themselves.