Season 14, Game 7: Win 2

We won this one 3-0 against the CNP Avalanche. An early nutmeg. Coach Tyler wanted Emi to shoot instead of trying to serve up an assist to a teammate.


Emi did some more nifty dribbling along the end line in the second half and again tried to serve up an assist to a teammate instead of trying to score. Same result.

Season 14, Games 4 & 5: First goal of 2019 (and the 2nd and the 3rd)

Twenty-one minutes in to the 3rd game of the season, Emi chases down a Sam-through-ball scores his first goal to give us a 1-0 lead over OKC South Lake Killer Bees.
10:21

Second verse, same as the first: two minutes later, Emi scores his second, and we're up 2-0.

Four minutes, he almost scores a third.

Not long after this one, Emi gets pulled back to the defensive end.

We end up winning: 6-2.
The Bees sting first in the second game of this double header. Fourteen minutes in, Emilio gets loose on a break away, breaks the keeper's ankle, and cooly scores the equalizer.

It's 3-3 by halftime, but the game slips away from us in a hot 2nd half as the Bees coach assigns a defender to shadow Emilio or Sam, whichever one is playing forward. We still manage to get several shots on goal, but none of them get through.

In terms of the cumulative score, though, we win: 9-7.

The First Track Meet

Emilio left at 7:15 this morning to participate in his first track meet today in Bristow. I couldn't get away from work until 10, and by the time I got to Bristow at 11:30, I had missed Emilio's first event: the 110 hurdles.

Emilio ran in lane one in his heat and wiped out on the first hurdle because of "nerves," he said. He popped back up but had no momentum and had to hop over the 2nd hurdle. Somehow, after that, he climbed his way back through the field to finish second and, according to his coach, he almost caught the guy who was in first.

His next event was the 400.

Unfortunately, he drew the outside lane.

He finished with a strong kick and passed several competitors to win second place in his heat by a nose.
Next up: the long jump.
Afterwards, Emilio reported that this was his favorite event. He felt least nervous about it.

He thought they might have measured him short on his first jump, but he also criticized himself for landing with one foot behind the other.
The last event of the day was the 4x400 relay.

Emilio ran the first leg and, unfortunately, drew the outside lane again.

Emilio finished with a strong kick again and passed two competitors on the straightaway before handing the baton to Carl.
By the end of Carl's leg, we were in second, and Case held our position there before handing the baton to Xander.
Xander ran a blistering anchor leg.

Coming into the last straightaway, Xander and the Snyder anchor were running stride for stride. Victory!
This team earned their medal. It was a great way to end the day.

Crystal Bridges Spring Break 2019

"Mamma, Mummy, and Mama (Predecessors #2)" (2014) by Njideka AkunYili Crosby
"Man on a Bench" (1977) by Duane Hansen.

Edgemont Spring Break 2019

Season 13, Game 8: The Night Goal

We had to reschedule a game against Ardmore--the only team in our division that we haven't played this season--because we will be playing a tournament next weekend when we were originally scheduled to play them. The ECU soccer coach told Amber, our team manager, that we could turn on the soccer field lights for a midweek night game, so the game was scheduled for 7 pm on a Tuesday. When we got to the field, however, we learned that only 3/8 of the lights were actually working! It was enough, but as you can see, it was dark.

Emilio started at forward, and Ardmore jumped out to an early lead. A little more than 30 minutes into the game, I am positioned behind the side judge on the darkest corner of the field when the ball makes its way to a shadowy figure at the top of the box. Nineteen seconds into the video below, you can see how that shadowy figure delivers a hard shot which careens off the keeper's mitts and then rolls into the back net. That shadowy figure is Emilio, and his goal evens the score 1-1. That's Emilio's sixth goal of the season.

Not long after that, Coach Tyler moves Emilio to midfield and Sam to forward. Emilio launches a successful through ball, which Sam runs down and then delivers neatly into the net to give us a 2-1 halftime lead.

At the start of the second half, I am in the brightest corner of the field when Mary Ann serves up a free kick that finds Emilio's foot in the box. Coach Tyler was unhappy with Sam's positioning, but Emilio draws the defense to him and then sneaks the ball through a defender's legs to Konner, our left forward, who is calling for the ball. Her kick puts us up 3-1.

Two minutes later, things got weird. The referee stopped play to scold the Ardmore coach for shouting criticisms at him. After that conversation seemed to have ended and the ref was walking back on to the field, the Ardmore coach muttered loudly enough for me to hear him at the other end of the field, "Call it both ways." The ref pivoted back towards him, and the Ardmore coach revised his comment to "Call it both ways please, sir."

Within minutes, the ref gave a red card to one of the Ardmore players for pushing Corbin down. The Ardmore coach started complaining loudly, and the ref called off the game.

Season 13, Game 7: Anudder Mudder

We came into this cold, muddy, rainy Sunday road game rematch against as heavy underdogs against division-leading Midwest City, which beat us soundly earlier this season. So going into half-time tied 1-1 was a huge shock. How did we do it? The biggest factor is that most of our team showed up!

Emilio got some time at forward in the first half but moved to defense in the second half, which is when I took these pictures.

We did not end up winning. But putting a scare into the undefeated Midwesterners felt good, even in the cold wind and rain.