Matthew - Legacy Showcase

Matthew was scheduled to play an indoor game (at Legacy) Saturday night but Friday brought some interesting emails - could the team switch schedules to an earlier time slot to play in a college showcase game. 30 minutes against two teams, 30 minutes off between games. Hate this late notice (I’m the manager this year to try and avoid some of the admin problems the team has been having - which would frustrate the hell out of me if I wasn’t kind of in charge) but ask everyone and it seems we can make it. Turns out the organizers did have 8-10 college coaches in attendance.

Match 1 - We play MAFC 02 - when Chill fell apart last year there were four ‘great’ 02s on that team. Three, including Matthew, play on the Rush team but one has chosen to drive down to Brighton to play with MAFC and has made some (maybe joking?) comments that he didn’t play with Rush because they/we were a ‘bad team’.

So it is really cool that we just obliterate the MAFC team. It’s 4-0 and the ref gives them a verrrry soft PK to make the final 4-1. Boys are really happy about the result, parents are happy, it’s a good thing. Against MRL competition (the ‘higher’ league that is ‘supposedly’ better than us) we are 4-0 this year when our full team plays.

Match 2 - we’re matched up against the Fire 00’s; they are two years older. And they come out and are bigger, faster, more physical, and we are down 2-0 quickly. We rally to play the rest of the game even but it was a disappointing outing. In the end…pretty easy to forget when you think back about how the day began with that win…yeah, who cares about this game.

Cpher - Dansville Wrestling

The first part of a long Saturday was heading out to watch Cpher wrestle in Dansville. This was, supposedly, an individual tournament. Not sure I understand that….they awarded team trophies at the end. But, schools could have more than one kid wrestle in each weight class.

There are 8 heavyweights - they are divided into 2 pools and they will wrestle the other 3 opponents and then have one final crossover match against the other pool; 1st -vs- 1st, 2nd -vs- 2nd.

Match 1: Goes up against the 2nd heavyweight from East Lansing. Cpher will face the varsity heavy in a week or two but just dominated this guy to end up winning by pin in the 2nd period. Tossed him around for all of the 1st period but couldn’t pin him - they had to stop the match because the kid has a bloody nose. In the 2nd period the kid got to his feet from the mat and Cpher just ‘helicoptered’ him back to the ground and he hit head and knees first and just stays down. Another injury delay. Kid does keep going and 10 seconds after that Cpher pins him.

Match 2: The opponent is from East Jackson - they walk out and I turn to another parent and go “this should be over quick”. The kid is a) a lot shorter and b) out of shape - pudgy is the key word here. And sure enough, 9 seconds after the match starts it is over. Shortest match of the year!

Match 3: Win this match and he wins the pool. But the opponent is Cpher’s kryptonite - a smaller (220 lb) faster kid who can wrestle. Cpher needs to learn that against this type of opponent he needs to slow the match down and take every opportunity to use his weight and size advantage against the kid by being on top of him and not losing control of him. His opponent, on the other hand, wants to go fast and create separation and tire Cpher out. And the match was fast moving and Cpher got pinned in about a minute.

Match 4: So it is a 2nd -vs- 2nd match up. And this match becomes Cpher’s longest match of the year - the first time there is no pin. It’s a strange but repetitive match. The kid from Grass Lake could get into Cpher’s legs and begin to take him down but it took a lot of effort and by the time he got Cpher down it turned out Cpher would be on top and get 2 points. The kid would escape and get a point and the process would begin again. Cpher won 16-8 and said he realized ealry on he wasn’t going to be able to pin this guy and just settled in and kept earning the points for the win.

Turns out the team took 2nd (out of 8 teams) and got a trophy. Cpher says he finished in a 3-way tie for first and will get a medal but I think either he or the person telling him this was confused; he finished in a tie for 2nd at 3-1. So he should get a medal in the mail.

Upcoming: There is a team meet on Wednesday but it looks like Cpher won’t wrestle; Everett doesn’t have a heavyweight. Then another tournament of some sort in Ithaca on Saturday

Matthew Soccer - Fort Wayne

The team played in a college showcase in Fort Wayne last weekend. I would have preferred we never went to the event - the games came after we hadnt practiced for 2 weeks and that certainly wasn’t optimal. Turns out the field wasn’t full-sized (it was full width but not full length) and the games were about 25 minute halfs (not 40). Just a waste of time in some ways - I refuse to believe there is a college coach out there who is watching any of the U16 or U17 teams playing there.

Game 1 - we won 3-1. We looked sloppy doing it but slowly just overpowered this team from Cleveland.

Game 2 - we lost 4-2. We were down 4-0 at the half; I’ve never seen this team play so poorly. I’ve never seen Matthew play so poorly - he was awful, worse than bad, and three of those goals were him missing a tackle and letting a guy have a wide open shot on goal. Ugly. I was dreading the ride home (we commuted instead of staying the night) but thankfully Matthew was in full agreement about how bad he played.

Game 3 won 4-1. We overpowered this team from Cincinnati - we were in full let’s experiment mode in the seond half. I had asked the coach if he was going to use these games to see people in different positions - pointed out to him that Matthew and Austin have played a ton of time in the midfield and he hasn’t seen that. So Matthew plays in the midfield most of this game - had a few chances to score but didn’t convert. Thought he played about 1000% better than Saturday night so that was a good thing.

Cpher Wrestling - Early January

The first Saturday tournament of January is in the books. Cpher goes 3-2; 1 win, 2 wins by forfeit, 2 losses. This continues a trend in every tournament so far - a 1-2 record in actual matches wrestled. I wasn’t there - Suzanne got the all-day wrestling duty this weekend - but here’s what I saw on the video.

1) Wins by pin in 1:29. Man, if there is a typical Cpher win it is this match….a whole lot of big guys jockeying for position for a 80 seconds, a Cpher throw to the ground and a pin 9 seconds later.

2) Loses by pin in 1:04. And a classic example of Cpher actually going up against someone who knows how to wrestle - the kid tied up Cpher’s arms for the entire match. What is becoming a trend (and not a positive one) is Cpher trying ‘something’ (possibly because he is impatient? need to ask him about this) and about 5 seconds after he tried that ‘something’ and failed he was pinned.

3) Loses by pin at 4:50. One of the longest matches Cpher has wrestled this year and he says he was losing 4-3 when it ended. Looked to me like he might have had the kid in a very good spot (for cpher) early in the 1st period but they ended up out of bounds and had to reset. The pin was sudden and weird; Cpher tried to throw him to the ground, didn’t do it, tripped, fell, and ended up on the bottom. The end.

He will win by forfeit on Wednesday to bring his record, with forfeits, to .500 at 7-7. I’ll spend a long day at a gym in Dansville with him on Saturday.

Club Soccer - Season To Date

Matthew’s soccer team hits the indoor fields again this weekend for 3 games in a “College Showcase”. This is code words for a tournament that may have some low level college coaches who will spend no time looking at your kid. But whatever.

This post will take some time since I need (or want) to explain where Matthew is at right now.

Chill: We’ve moved on from our club soccer home for the last 4(?) years. How hard is it to run a soccer club and pay your coaches on time? Apparently, it’s a very hard task - we’ve now left two clubs because of it.

So, the choice came down to driving 45 minutes plus (each way) for practice and games or stay closer to home and be on a very good Rush Lansing team that, convienently, needed a center back. And we were going to go tryout out for the other club, but, it turned out the first tryout was on the first day of finals and I just couldn’t stomach Matthew being in the car for 90 minutes when he really need to study. So that was that.

The Rush Lansing team MIGHT be the best team that Matthew has ever been on - there’s a whole birth year switch that happened that I’m not going to get into here - but the team has 4 or 5 kids who can score, a decent goalie, and now with the 3 kids that came over from Chill, a solid defense and an improved midfield. And the results to date show that. Went to Indianapolis in November and went 2-0-1 against some very high-level teams.

So, optimism is high for the coming season. The ‘drama’ on the team is a little hard to deal with - maybe I’ll go into that more later.

The long-lost Santa

Of all the different Christmas ornaments and items that would come out each Christmas when I was a kid, there was only one that I still remember - the Santa with the nose that you push and he sings. “Welcome one, welcome all, Santa Claus (pause) is (pause) here!"

The Santa we had was destroyed in a drunken fit of rage when a) I was in high school and b) not at the house. But with the arrival of the internet and, even better, the arrival of internet auction shopping, I’ve been looking around for the Santa. But it’s been a mostly fruitless search - what do you type in as seach terms to get the thing to show up? Singing Santa push nose?

But this year, while in Nashville for Thanksgiving, I tried again and this time, and I’m not sure that I’ve done this before, I just searched images. And lo-and-behold, about 3/4 of the way down the screen, there it was.

Finding it was one thing - finding one that I could buy was another! But just finding it was useful - the one I found had a picture of the box and so I learned a better search was “Santa Door Decoration” and the word ‘vintage’ might help to cut down on the false returns. So I went back out, searched the internet, ebay, nothing. And then one of the search returns had the word ‘etsy’ and I figured I might as well try that

And there it was! But…..it didn’t work - the listing says even with a new battery it wouldn’t work. I figured what the hell, get it and see if it was a simple fix I could figure out or worst-case I had to find someone to repair it. Turns out I couldn’t fix it - but, taking it to a local shop they were able to fix it (a short-term fix, they said they needed to order a new motor for a more permanent fix).

It was really cool to hear it again - and see it work the 5 or 6 times we were able to get it to play at home before it died again. I didn’t realize the Santa would dredge up some very bad memories for my sister of our Dad - but, I think anything from our past runs the risk of that.

Wrestling - Season To Date

So Cpher has returned to wrestling since his time in 8th grade. He was convinced/cajoled into this - I’m kind of surprised (but happy) that we ended up here.

1) His friend Sean has been working on and trying to get Cpher to return to wrestling since 8th grade.
2) I think, sadly, his lacrosse days are over. More on this later as we move into spring. But since he might not be doing that Mom and Dad have strongly suggested he continue to do a sport (or two) to help with fitness and weight control.

Cpher is 3-5 so far this season. His wins, for the most part, happen because he can bring his size and strength into play and the other kid, who is invariably smaller and lighter, can’t handle it. His losses are almost all the same - he runs up against someone who is a better ‘wrestler’ and he gets Cpher into a bad position and Cpher can’t escape and gets pinned.

The last ‘meet’, two matches on a Wednesday night, are probably worth describing as a good summary of where we are at. Cpher thought he’d lose both of these league matches and turned out going 1-1. I’m ecstatic that he got the win but disappointed in how the loss came about.

The first match, the win, was the first time I’ve seen Cpher get out of bad spots. He was down 4-0 in the match; the kid from Jackson had taken him down twice and usually once Cpher is down with the kid above him it’s a very bad thing. But he battled and got to the edge of the mat twice and that got him back to a ‘neutral’ position (although still ‘down’ - better than a position where he could immediately get pinned) and then eventually escaped (earning a point, losing 4-1 now). And then he got the kid in a hold, took him down to the mat and 20 seconds later Cpher wins.

The second match was against the guy he is going to have to beat at some point this year to have any ‘success’ this season (in league, in districts, etc.). And for about a minute Cpher was having quite a battle with him - the kid can’t get Cpher down and Cpher can’t get him down either. Finally the kid does get Cpher on the mat and the pin happens quickly after that. I’m disappointed that Cpher, to me, didn’t try harder to escape - it was pretty clear that Cpher was happy enough just winning once on the evening and he even admits he didn’t try very hard (like he did in the first match) to escape.