My U7 recreation team had a wonderful season this Fall. The team is really starting to work well together in regard to using the whole field, passing the ball and not bunching. I’m very impressed with their progression at this young of an age. I wish I could take credit for it. 
One of the teams we played (I’ll refer to them as SH) this year told me that his team has never been beaten…until they played my team. He was excited by the loss because his team always wins lopsided games and it’s hard to help develop a team that wins by an average of 10 goals a game. He had finally found a team that played at the same level as his team.
With this in mind, he wanted to schedule a friendly with my team. I thought it might be interesting to bring another team into the mix that I know plays at our level (I’ll refer to them as CL). This other team plays in our league, but plays in a different bracket based on geography….plus, I used to with with their coach.
I contacted both coaches to set it up and it was set. We would play a round robin with two 15 minute halves with a 5 minute halftime. The results were as follows:
CL 2 vs. SH 2
CL 3 vs. my team 2 (CL scored their last goal in the last 15 seconds of the game)
SH 2 vs. my team 5
All in all, I would say it was pretty even all the way around. The kids had a great time, the parents had fun and us coaches had a blast. The best moment came when all the teams came together in the middle of the field after all the games for a quick, thankful speech by us coaches and a big unified cheer….”1-2-3-TEAM”.
I love how teams can get together to have some competition without the competition getting to the players, parents and coaches. I didn’t hear a cross word, an angry statement or any negative comment or action by anyone.
Even though my team had one win and one loss, it didn’t matter. The kids played great and had fun. We’re even thinking of making this a bi-annual event for our teams.
I can’t wait until Spring!
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: soccer, youth
