Paint Fumes Improve Your Soccer Game

Today was an awesome day. Two reasons:

1. My U-16 team volunteered to do some community service at a local shelter for abused and neglected children. The shelter is run by Acadiana Youth. We set out to paint the pantry and do some basic landscaping. We accomplished both tasks as well as accomplished some miscellaneous chores as well. It was about 3 hours or so of good hard work and my guys did a great job. One of the kids at the shelter was bonding with the guys and it was cool to see him interact with my team. They are a good group of guys and it was awesome to see such a big (optional) turnout for an event that benefited kids who are less fortunate than them.
2. My same U-16 team has been trying to set up a scrimmage against the premier team in town for a few weeks and the only day that worked out was today. I was really hesitant to schedule a day of manual labor on the same day that we were going to play a scrimmage against one of the top premier teams in the state. Premier is the league above us, so we are underdogs in any game against a premier team. My guys all showed up late because they were exhausted from work. You could tell they were tired. We went down 1-0. Tied it up. Went down 2-1. Tied it up. And then took the lead. We came back from a 1 goal deficit twice. Adrenaline must have kicked in because we ended up winning 3-2. More important than that is how we played overall. We moved the ball with one and two touch passes and were incredibly aggressive. I'm not sure where they got the energy but they did it. All told, in the last 2 weeks we have beaten the U15 Premier State Champs and the U16 Premier State Championship Finalists. Not bad for a D1 squad. That said, we head into Districts to defend our own title this upcoming weekend. People will be gunning for us so I expect every game to be really difficult.
   

So yeah. Awesome Sunday. I'm proud of my guys. Check out this picture. I get a kick out of the faces these guys make. One of the best is the philosopher pose on the guy next to me. Painting masks are the new fashion statement. Check out the full Flickr set.