Tournament Surprise!

After watching Nina's team play in their first Monsterball Tournament game in Ardmore, Emilio skipped a lunch date at Pizza Hut to watch the first tournament game for the U-14 Ada Energy, which includes many teammates (Sam, Angel, Logan, Dexter, Colton, Ian) from the U-12 team Emilio played on last year as a nine-year-old. When Nina's coach saw Emilio, he asked him if wanted to play. "Yes!" was the answer, and after talking to the U-14 coach, he made it happen. So after Pablo's game in Atoka ended, he and I drove back to Ada to pick up Emi's cleats, shorts, and shin guards, and headed down to Ardmore. Emi wore Nina's jersey (because the U-14 team already had a #10; they also had a #7, but we didn't know that) and yellow socks borrowed from Dex, who couldn't stick around the U-14's 5 p.m. game against the Ardmore Thunder (whom the Energy lost to 5-4 when they played on September 24th).
Emi subbed in at left midfielder, with the score 1-0 in our favor, and almost connected on a corner. Afterwards, he looked over at me, thinking "Did you see how close I was to making that?"


From the defensive end of the field, Emi forwarded the ball to set up a score by #29, center forward, Phillip Jones--Emi's best play of the game. Phillip gave Emilio a high-five just before I took this picture.

We went into half-time leading 3-0.
Emi came again at left midfielder in the second half.

Final score: Ada Energy 4, Ardmore Thunder 2.
At the end of the first day of the Tournament, the Ada Energy is tied for second place with Woodward (the team they played to a 1-1 tie in Saturday's first game), and Emilio has been invited back to play in the Energy's 10:30 game against Real Madill on Sunday (whom the Energy beat 3-0 on September 10th).