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Well, our last tournament was actually the weekend of August 4th and 5th. It was an odd ending for Cori's team and a bit of a disappointment. The good side is that as a team we certainly made our mark around town and it is quite evident that we will be competition for a long time to come.
Since we weren't quite ready for it to end on such a note we made the decision to attend one last "for-fun" tournament the past weekend. We didn't actually attend this tournament with our full comp soccer team. This tournament requires only a team of 3 with a maximum of 6. It is called LIVE 3 v. 3. There are 3 players on the field at a time and the field is only 30' x 40' with much smaller goals.
Cori's best friend just started playing competitive soccer this year and doesn't have quite as much experience as Cori. Because of this she and Cori didn't get to play together as often as they would have liked. Once Cori decided to play 3 v. 3, she was very sure she wanted to play with Alli more than she wanted to create a highly competitive team. She talked her Dad into coaching her team of 4. She chose one other young player from her comp team, and Alli, her best friend. Because the two other players we young and the fact that Cori is actually a young skilled player they were able to play in a lower age group so we added Cassi as a sub, in the event one of the girls needed a break and had an injury.
Cassi was not originally really thrilled about playing as she has never played competitively. She was rather nervous about the whole thing at the first practice. One it was over however she decided it might be a lot of fun and then we had to wonder was being a sub going to be enough.
Needless to say, the day before the tournament we found out that there were no other U-9 teams and therefore we would have to play all U-10 teams. Quite a challenge since we also found out that 5 teams of the 8 in the division they put us in were made up of competitive players which meant a pretty high level of skill. We actually considered pulling out of the tourny but Cori simply decided that they would practice every night of the week leading up to the big day! Of course, coach Dad loved that every day ofter work!
The tournament did turn out to be quite a challenge. We were often out skilled. That being said, Each girl really stepped up to the plate. Cassi was really tough for having never have played competitively and Cori was a wonder-Gurl! Not having some of the usual older leaders from her team, she really kicked it in on Saturday! She was everywhere! She knew her teams' game depended on her and she pulled it off.
It was a really fun, long day! It moves very quickly. I forgot to mention that Scott also filled in as Coach for Alli's big sisters team too! Basically we went from one game to another the whole day.
Since I had forewarned the tournament director of the drastic age difference within our bracket he created a championship between us and the youngest of the other teams.
We took second! Scott can explain why it worked out as such. It could have been very different however we decided the girls had to also learn that sometimes officials can really mess up. The nice thing is that they ended up having second place medals for the girls and they were really proud to take those home!
At the end of the day, we decided we liked this ending much better than the one we had two weeks before.
