State Champions!

I'm proud to announce that our girls brought home a State Championship this weekend!

They sure tried to keep it interesting by taking the semi-final game into a shoot-out (which, for the record--way more nerve-wracking as a coach than when I played in them as a keeper), but were nothing but solid after that, with a decisive 6-0 win in the championship game. Super proud of all the hard work the girls put in this season and excited that they were able to bring home some hardware for their efforts!

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all this free time now that I'm not coaching soccer any more.... Maybe I'll actually start helping out around the house, although it was really fun having Darrell do all the work :)

Photo Gem

One of the best parts about Darrell being a "camera person" is that he is plenty willing to come to the games I am coaching (because honestly, unless you have a legitimate investment in the game, girl's soccer can be kind of boring. Especially if you are a male soccer player. So taking pictures keeps him occupied). And the best part about him being a talented camera person with nice equipment is that he is able to capture shots like this:

Pretty darn sweet.

First Weekend Under our Belts

Well, between varsity and junior varsity we played four games this weekend, and managed to come home with three wins. Not too bad of a weekend--on paper at least. As a coaching staff, there were definitely quite a few things we were not too pleased with, like giving up two goals in the first five minutes (not surprisingly, that ended up being the game we lost). But, we've got a whole week before our next game to tune-up some of the issues, and will hopefully come away with victories for both teams after our games on Saturday.

I should mention that I can't critique Saturday's games too much since I wasn't there; my cousin was getting married in Mitchell that evening, and since my grandpa (mom's dad) will likely be passing in the next few weeks, a lot of out-of-state relatives made an effort to come back for the event and there were lots of family pictures to be had. So, while I'm sad to have missed our second set of games, it was a blessing to get to spend that time with family. But more on that later once Darrell gets the pictures uploaded :)

It's Go Time

Eek! We've got our first soccer games this weekend--I'm not so sure that I'm entirely ready for this. Getting the jitters as a player is one thing, but those are pretty easy to run out in the opening minutes. I'm not sure what happens when one gets the jitters as a coach--I feel like they'll probably stick around for the whole game. And considering I get anxious sometimes just watching my brother play baseball, I can't imagine how I'll respond when it's my team and my players on the line.

Fingers crossed for a successful first weekend!

On Coaching

So I totally slacked off on posting at the end of last week. On more than one occasion, I thought to myself "I should really jump on the computer write a new blog post". But you know what I did instead in most instances? Took a nap.

Why? Well, it turns out coaching is more time-consuming than I expected. Last week we ran two-a-days for tryouts, so I knew that I was going to have four hours of practice each day. Not so bad. But, as the coaching staff, we needed to get the field set for practice, fill the water, and other small tasks, which usually meant we were at practice at least 45 minutes before start time. Plus, after practice, we had to clean everything up, get ice for the girls, and make sure all the girls had left, so we were at the fields for at least 30 more minutes. So our time "on the field" for practice was not just the two hours that were scheduled, but more like three and a half hours per training session. Additionally, we needed to have training plans for the practices, so that required additional meeting time. And as the goalkeeper "expert" on the coaching staff, I needed to put together some drills and exercises for the keepers, which kept me busy out of practice as well. And did I mention that our first training session started at 8 AM, which meant I was up by 6:30 so I could be on the field by 7:15? I definitely have not been getting up that early this summer.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not complaining in the least. I thoroughly enjoyed my first week of coaching and am really looking forward to the rest of the season. The girls are great and I get along really well with the other coaches. But man, that first week was just exhausting--and I didn't even do any of the conditioning we put the girls through! I have no idea how my collegiate coach ran both the men's and women's programs, which required a minimum of two practices a day during the season (sometimes more if we had separate conditioning sessions or keeper practices) and five training sessions a day during preseason (two training sessions per team per day, plus a joint early morning conditioning session). The training sessions in college exhausted me as a player, but in retrospect thinking about all the work that went into planning those sessions is exhausting me as a coach!