Soccer Tournament and Abram's First Solo

Sunday October 10th was a great day.  Rachel's U10 soccer team entered into a MAYS tournament.  Eight girls from the team were able to play in the tournament.  Chris Szal, the man I coach with, also entered his U14 girls into this tournament.  Carmen's team did not have enough players willing to come to this tournament.  She came to hang out with her friends that day though.  She know most of the U14 players here and many of them were teammates of hers in the past. 

Here is a picture of both the U10 and U14 girls.  Rachel is on the left, diagonally from the man in a red shirt.  Carmen is standing on the right, wearing black sweatshirt.

Our first game was against a division 1 team who was ranked 2nd in our league.  Rachels' team is a D3 team.  Despite the difference the girls played strong.  The turf was also different for them, it was astro turf.  I forewarned the girls that the ball rolls faster, therefore the game will be faster.
 

Rachel doesn't usually play goalie, but I felt she had the skills needed to keep to score down. She played well.  She comes out of goal to clear balls.  She is fearless enabling her to dive for balls when players are near her.  She also plays strong defense so she watches the ball and is accustomed to charging players.

I was very impressed with the girls who played at this tournament. With 8 players there were two subs.  Each girl played hard and asked to go back in as soon as I could sub them in.  It is always good to have players who want to play.  Their record was 1-1 for  the tournament.  Playing on the astro-turf gave them a taste of indoor soccer.  I will be coaching two indoor teams this winter.

Carmen joined in the fun with Rachel (#17) and Kate.  Kate's sister plays on Carmen's U14 team.

More chill time.  The first game was at 11:30 and the second at 2:30.  It gave us time to wait in the huge lines for lunch and hang out together.

I mentioned in the beginning of the blog that Chris Szal had two teams in this tournament.  The organization scheduled games at the same time.  He coached the U10s for their first game and then switched to the U14 team for the second game.  I was offered assistance from a parent that had been a JV coach before.  It was good to coach with someone my height!

I've been told that Carmen ran onto the field during half time and was rolling around.  I have several pictures of her doing this, but I like this picture of her.

 

There was a very tall player on the second team wee played.   She did use her elbows too much though.  The ref didn't say anything to her.

 

Carmen took this neat portrait of Marita.  Abram picked her up at our Dunkin' Donuts drop off spot.  This is approximately half way between Merrimack, NH and Shrewsbury.

Abram soloed on October 10th!!!!

I was at the tournament and received a text that he soloed.  This picture taken by the flight school:  East Coast Aero Club.  They have a facebook page and he's on it.

Since then he has done 2 more supervised solo flights and one today all solo for 2 hours!  Nice job hunny.  My turn is next.