Mead Cup

September 08, 2015

Mead Cup

Alyssa's soccer team participated in the Mead Cup over the weekend. The Mead Cup is a very large tournament that attracts many teams from all over- local and as far as Canada (the girls number one ranked Canadian U15 team participated in it). The Mead company used to be one of the Dayton area's two Fortune 500 companies. Then it merged with a company, changed its name (although kept the Mead moniker for its well known paper product line), and moved out of Dayton. Whether Mead still sponsors the tournament or CUSA, the soccer club that hosts the tournament, retains the name "Mead" since that's what it was called for so long, I have no idea.

Alyssa's team was placed in the top division of girls U10 age group. There were eight teams in the top division. Those teams were divided into two brackets. The winner from each bracket would meet in the final. Since teams aren't seeded, it's very possible that the two best teams are in the same bracket. That means that the final game won't necessarily be comprised of the two best teams, just the two best teams from each bracket.

When the schedule came out, we were pleased to see that two teams whom we're in fierce competition with, CU Lakota and CU Southeast were in the same bracket together. We weren't in their bracket. That means that we didn't have to face either one of them until the finals. Our bracket looked easy- we should be able to emerge the victor from our bracket. Then something incredible happened. The team admin from Lakota contacted someone from CUSA and complained about the brackets. He or she said that it was unfair that they (Lakota) were playing the same teams they've always played; they wanted different opponents. Shockingly, CUSA agreed and switched teams around. When the new schedule came out, Southeast was in our bracket and not in Lakota's. Lakota now had an easy road to the finals. What was worse than that for us, was that when the new schedule came out, the arrangement of games changed, too. We had an early Saturday morning game and then in the early afternoon, we had to face Southeast. But it would be Southeast's first game of the day. It would be our second game. In a game like soccer, where so much of it is comprised of running, which is a very tiring activity, freshness of fitness matters. It's patently unfair to have one team be playing its first game of the day when it was another team's second game of the day. Exacerbating that disadvantage, by the afternoon, the temperature was supposed to hit 90. So we'd be playing our second game of the day in super hot conditions, which is especially tiring after already having played a game while our opponents hadn't played yet.

Of course our soccer coach didn't take the new, horribly unfair to us, changes without a fight. Even the coach of Southeast agreed that it was an unfair advantage for them and said that he wanted to play us on equal footing. But the organizers of the Mead Cup remained steadfast. The unfairness of it fell on deaf ears. I honestly think I would have pulled out of the tournament in protest if it had been up to me. Of course we probably wouldn't have gotten our money back, but still, it would have created a big scheduling challenge if we had pulled out since that would have left seven teams in the age group and not eight. I would have done it to Mead in a heartbeat!

As we thought would happen, we easily beat our Saturday morning opponent 4 or 5 to 1. We then lost Saturday afternoon to Southeast 0-5 (we'd beaten them 4-1 in the last tournament so we knew we could beat them. The advantage they had on Saturday was real). That put us out of running to make the final game. We easily beat our Sunday morning opponent 5-0 (teams are guaranteed three games in the tourney. The Sunday morning game meant nothing in terms of making it to the finals or not). So that was that. Very disappointing because we felt like the Lakota admin and the Mead Cup organizers ensured that we lost/ didn't make it out of our bracket. As we predicted, Lakota and Southeast won their brackets and met in the final. We were THRILLED that Southeast beat Lakota in the final game (Lakota had beat Southeast in the last tournament they were in so L probably thought they would win again).

I went to the first and third games of the tournament and got some pretty good pictures. I was taking pictures for the whole team so I was getting pictures of all the girls, not just Alyssa. It turned out that I took far fewer pictures of Alyssa than of the other girls. What's that saying about the cobbler's children having no shoes?? That's sort of how I felt photography wise on Saturday :). Saturday afternoon, while Alyssa's team was losing to Southeast, I was in Springboro at Jacob's soccer game. It was a home game and the Panthers easily beat Amelia 4-0. On Sunday morning, I attended Alyssa's third and final game and got some good pictures. For much of this game, Alyssa's position on the field was close to me and I took advantage of that by getting some pretty good shots of her.

These first few were taken on Saturday morning against Celtic. One of Alyssa's teammates had just scored a goal and the girls are excited. Too bad the camera focused more on the dejected Celtic girl!

Lil' defender waiting on some action...

...getting ready to get some action

I like this picture but wish Alyssa wasn't so much in the corner of the picture. I noticed that many of my shots with Alyssa in them were not great shots from a composition view point. I think this is because I'm trying to watch and take pictures and you can't do both well (at least I can't!). The action is also fast moving so getting a great shot is pretty difficult.

After another goal...

Protecting the goal from a corner kick...

I like this shot from a picture point of view. I like how the Celtic girl is in mid air. It looks like the ball is going into the goal but our goalie stopped it :).