Premier SuperCopa Part 2- The soccer games
The tournament was set up like this (I think I have it right...): There were 16 teams for each age group/ boy/ girl division. The 16 teams were divided into four groups of four and were seeded. Alyssa's team got the second seed in her group. Each team played one game on Thursday and two games on Friday. Based on the results of those games, each age group/ boy/ girl division was then rebracketed or divided into two groups- a gold group for teams who finished in the top 8 spots after the three games and a silver division for teams who finished in the lower 8 of the original 16 teams. Alyssa's team won two of its first three games and lost one. That was good enough to be in the gold division; we were seeded 7th of the 8 teams in gold. The teams then played a game on Saturday. Whichever teams lost on Saturday were finished with the tournament. Whoever won those games made it the semi finals that were held Sunday morning. Whichever teams lost the Sunday morning game were finished while the winners of the Sunday morning games played each other in the final which was Sunday afternoon. Alyssa's team, against every conceivable odd, won its Saturday game which put us in the semis on Sunday. Her team lost that game so they were finished Sunday morning.
I'll go into more detail as I post pictures of each game. I did not get many good pictures, especially in the more important games. I was too focused on watching the games. But, I did get pictures before each game when the girls came out onto the field and I got some shots after we scored goals in games.
The first game that we played was on Thursday at 1:30 pm. We played a team from Minnesota called Eclipse Select 06. We thought this was going to be a fairly easy win and it was, but it was not without some worry. The other team scored first and within the first few minutes. So we were down 0-1 until we scored which wasn't for at least 10 minutes. We won the game 4-1. Here are a few pictures from that game:
Excited after a goal...
The girls' next game was Friday morning at 10:30. The girls played Universal Soccer and Futsal Academy. This game was a pretty easy win- it was 4-0. Here are a few photos:
The girls played their second game of the day at 1:30 pm. This was the game we were somewhat expecting to lose. The reason for the pessimism was that the team we were playing, Anaheim Surf, was ranked number five in the country for all of the girls' 06 select soccer teams that exist. Alyssa's team was ranked 32nd in the nation- not shabby at all considering there are thousands of 06 teams against which they are ranked. Still, beating the number five team seemed too insurmountable. In the end, it was. We lost to Surf 0-3. It was a brutal game. Two of our girls left the game with concussions. Surf played very physically...
That awkward moment when you realize you're marking someone who's likely the same height and weight as your mother...
Ach, wish this wasn't blurry- I didn't bother to crop out Griffen (little boy in the red shirt) because it wasn't a great shot to begin with.
The good news about this play is...
...that Alyssa got to the ball first and cleared it.
...the bad news is that Alyssa went down after being fouled (that wasn't called if I remember correctly)
Throw in...
... and another
Protecting the corner from a corner kick...
She was taking some type of kick here. I wish I'd actually captured the kick but this is all I have...
So after our loss to Surf, we were 2-1 before the rebracketing. But, that was still good enough to get us into the top division of two divisions that were made after three games of play. We weren't seeded high after the rebracketing (seven out of eight) and guess who we had to play next day? A team from Texas who was ranked number two in the nation. Now if we couldn't beat the number five team in the nation, what chance did we have to beat the number two team?? I'm not sure what the odds were but we beat the odds because our girls BEAT THE NUMBER TWO RANKED GIRLS 06 SOCCER TEAM!
The game was against Dallas Sting and it was played on an extremely windy (wind gusts of up to 35 mph) and hot day. Anything out of the norm (the wind certainly was) bode well for us underdogs. Teams who'd played this Dallas game before said that they were very physical and rough. Some said they were rougher than Surf and we wound up with two girls with concussions after the Surf game. What allowed us to win were two things: the main referee in this game was so good. He called fouls rather than let the girls get away with almost anything (as what happened in the Surf game). Our one and only goal (we won 1-0) was off of a free kick from a foul near the box. That happened early on and we felt like Sting played a little more cleanly after that. The other thing that allowed us to win was that our goalie played incredibly well. Don't think we kept the number two team in the nation from getting shots off- they got off about 25 or so. Some of their shots were off by a bit (and here's where the extreme wind likely played a big role) but many of them were stopped by our goalie Kalina.
Winning the game against Sting meant we'd made it to the semi- finals and would stay one more day and play again on Sunday.
Here are just a few pictures from the game:
The refs and players line up before the game starts...
You can see from the girls' hair how windy it was. Crews were filming all of the games that teams could then purchase but this game wasn't filmed because of the wind (it had something to do with a piece of equipment they used that was not wind tolerate!).
This was the free kick from which we scored.
I got the shot in the air but unfortunately didn't get it sailing into the goal.
The girls were sooooooooo excited about the goal
...back to work
Alyssa gets ready to kick...
The coaches were... vocal
Throw in...
Alyssa got to the ball first but she kicked it out and Sting had a corner kick
...defending one post
Getting ready for a throw in (super close to where I was sitting, lol)
...goal number 37 that Kalina saved??
After the game...
Here is a picture of Kalina and Alyssa after the game. Alyssa likely will not like this picture because her hair is all catawampus but I think it's a great picture. The girls were so happy to win and both had played really well (especially Kalina!). Alyssa normally wears her hair in a pony tail but earlier in the day Kalina had volunteered to French braid Alyssa's hair for the game.
Sweet girls, good friends and great soccer players!!
I have no pictures for the game against Chicago Fire, the semi final that the girls played on Sunday morning. I was too nervous to take pictures :). Our girls didn't play their best and Fire did. Fire was a very good team- lots of skill and speed. They weren't dirty at all and definitely deserved to win. They beat us 1-6. As disappointing as it was to lose in the semis, the girls had done extremely well to get to the semis and we parents were so proud of them.
Next I'll post pictures of some of the fun things/ good times the girls had in Rockford.
I'll go into more detail as I post pictures of each game. I did not get many good pictures, especially in the more important games. I was too focused on watching the games. But, I did get pictures before each game when the girls came out onto the field and I got some shots after we scored goals in games.
The first game that we played was on Thursday at 1:30 pm. We played a team from Minnesota called Eclipse Select 06. We thought this was going to be a fairly easy win and it was, but it was not without some worry. The other team scored first and within the first few minutes. So we were down 0-1 until we scored which wasn't for at least 10 minutes. We won the game 4-1. Here are a few pictures from that game:
Excited after a goal...
The girls played their second game of the day at 1:30 pm. This was the game we were somewhat expecting to lose. The reason for the pessimism was that the team we were playing, Anaheim Surf, was ranked number five in the country for all of the girls' 06 select soccer teams that exist. Alyssa's team was ranked 32nd in the nation- not shabby at all considering there are thousands of 06 teams against which they are ranked. Still, beating the number five team seemed too insurmountable. In the end, it was. We lost to Surf 0-3. It was a brutal game. Two of our girls left the game with concussions. Surf played very physically...
That awkward moment when you realize you're marking someone who's likely the same height and weight as your mother...
The good news about this play is...
...that Alyssa got to the ball first and cleared it.
...the bad news is that Alyssa went down after being fouled (that wasn't called if I remember correctly)
... and another
Protecting the corner from a corner kick...
She was taking some type of kick here. I wish I'd actually captured the kick but this is all I have...
The game was against Dallas Sting and it was played on an extremely windy (wind gusts of up to 35 mph) and hot day. Anything out of the norm (the wind certainly was) bode well for us underdogs. Teams who'd played this Dallas game before said that they were very physical and rough. Some said they were rougher than Surf and we wound up with two girls with concussions after the Surf game. What allowed us to win were two things: the main referee in this game was so good. He called fouls rather than let the girls get away with almost anything (as what happened in the Surf game). Our one and only goal (we won 1-0) was off of a free kick from a foul near the box. That happened early on and we felt like Sting played a little more cleanly after that. The other thing that allowed us to win was that our goalie played incredibly well. Don't think we kept the number two team in the nation from getting shots off- they got off about 25 or so. Some of their shots were off by a bit (and here's where the extreme wind likely played a big role) but many of them were stopped by our goalie Kalina.
Winning the game against Sting meant we'd made it to the semi- finals and would stay one more day and play again on Sunday.
Here are just a few pictures from the game:
The refs and players line up before the game starts...
I got the shot in the air but unfortunately didn't get it sailing into the goal.
The girls were sooooooooo excited about the goal
...back to work
The coaches were... vocal
Throw in...
Alyssa got to the ball first but she kicked it out and Sting had a corner kick
...defending one post
Getting ready for a throw in (super close to where I was sitting, lol)
...goal number 37 that Kalina saved??
After the game...
Sweet girls, good friends and great soccer players!!
I have no pictures for the game against Chicago Fire, the semi final that the girls played on Sunday morning. I was too nervous to take pictures :). Our girls didn't play their best and Fire did. Fire was a very good team- lots of skill and speed. They weren't dirty at all and definitely deserved to win. They beat us 1-6. As disappointing as it was to lose in the semis, the girls had done extremely well to get to the semis and we parents were so proud of them.
Next I'll post pictures of some of the fun things/ good times the girls had in Rockford.
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