Soccer, the good, bad and the beautiful.

The Good

Soccer season has started up for the Hutch again. You may recall that our boys are soccer fanatics, particularly Kodiak. Iceman and Turtle play one night a week. Kodiak plays twice and practices once a week. La Diva opted out because there was not a team for her age range in our town and she wasn't up for playing with strangers in another town. She is in swimming instead and was on the High Jump team. She did very well at that for her first foray into the sport. She's obviously inherited my Mom's talents in that arena as she was a long jump and high jump champ in High School. We enjoy soccer, it's a great sport to watch.

The Bad

Unfortunately Kodiak's soccer season has been nothing short of a gong show. He was in such an awesome league last year but they are suffering from volunteer shortages and had to cut out the older age levels and run a smaller program this year. So we moved on to the next city... ugh... we should have headed west. From the get go this has been a disaster of an experience. The woman in charge of his age level pretty much bullied the coach and assistants into coaching... one of them being the Hero. He booked up his schedule with work after he was initially told he wasn't needed to coach. He has only been able to make one game so far and no practices. Hopefully that will change after this week is done. I have never in my life seen such a disorganized coach- last night was their 3rd game and he has still not organized lines or positions for the boys to play. So it is a gong show of boys running around without understanding of their position and bagging on each other for ever slip up. There are some kids with really great skills on the team that really want to play. Then there are a bunch of arrogant mouthpieces who don't listen to anyone, rag on every player while they don't contribute one positive thing to the team. They lip off the refs, ignore the coaches and do their own thing. They are the first to blame their teammates for their losses. (they've had 2 losses and 1 rain out so far this season). Last night by some miracle they managed to get 3 goals- the first was scored by our very own Kodiak. Their opponents rallied in the second half and outplayed the cocky twerps who got lazy and arrogant. Unfortunately Kodiak was in net for the 2nd half. He is not a goalie. He tries to be but it's not his strength. He is a killer defenceman and he does well as striker. He tried his best and was beating himself up when the other team managed to score twice on him and win the game. The thing is he had no defence to speak of. The hotshots who beat him down for losing the game for them did not make a goal, they huddled in a group of idiots to create a defence wall which only made it impossible for their goalie to see the play or have a clue where the ball was. They play dumb. I told him to cut himself some slack and that it takes a whole team to win and a whole team to lose. That they will continue to lose every game until they learn how to play their positions and work together as a team. Soccer is a sport of brains, skill and teamwork. They twerps who had the most criticism were ones that didn't score a goal, didn't aid in the scoring of the goals and defended nothing.

The kids that they beat up on are the ones that have the skills- some of them are small for their age, some are heavy but they know what they are doing. They are trying to listen to their disorganized coach whose practices are also a lesson in disorganized chaos with him abandoning drills half way through and letting the twerps jack around and not listen. In fact at the last practice one of these twerps was chasing another and grabbed me hard and almost threw me to the ground. They kept on like nothing had happened. I said very loudly "Excuse me" and then they turned and said "oh sorry!". Needless to say I'm still suffering from that incident. I feel like I should have bruises on my arms where he grabbed me but I have nothing but pain to show for it. BTW I was on the sidelines trying to catch parents with the picture forms that the coach failed to hand out the time before and pictures were later that afternoon.

So we are very disheartened by this soccer experience. I hope that they can improve it for the sake of Kodiak and his teammates that want to play. I'm not holding out much hope because these kids are a mess... I sat with the opposing team because if the kids are such pukes you can only imagine how pukey their parents must be. UGH! I didn't want to spend my evening biting my tongue in two listening to them.

The Beautiful

We are going to see Beckham tonight. The Galaxy is playing an exhibition game with the team from a nearby province. This will make my soccer angst all better. How can it not???.......