Spartan Team Pic

Front row, from left to right: Luke (defense), Christian (defense), Gage (goalkeeper), Tristan (defense/forward), Gareth (right forward), Devin (left forward). Back row, from left to right: Ethan (defense), Blake (center mid), Carl (defense/injured), Caden (defense), Tyler (defense), Emilio (center forward), Asher (defense). Not pictured above, but pictured below at the left end of the back row: Bentley (left/right forward).

Now starting at point guard . . .

In his second game, Emilio gets the start at point guard. He'll play the first half of each quarter, and then his crew of five will rotate off to be replaced by a fresh group of subs from the bench.
This highlight reel begins with the first possession. When Emi gets passed back to, he is open and launches one from the top of the key. It doesn't hit the mark, but it's close, and shows the kind of confidence he plays with. He told me afterwards that he declined to take any other open shots from outside because he didn't think his coach would want him to. He was perfect on his breakaway layups, and finished with six points on the day, which probably led the team (which scored 21 points total). When he penetrates and gets stopped, he passed the ball back out, chased down lots of loose balls and nabbed several rebounds. He loves to drive and dish. And when his group left the court midway through the fourth, we were winning a game that we eventually loss by a single point.

Emi digs b-ball.

Emi's Hat

That's how it's done: Gareth centers the ball to Emi, whose shot to the far post is successfully intercepted by Bentley. And just like that, one minute in, we're up 1-0.

In quick order, a 1-0 lead becomes a 1-4 deficit. Then Blake centers the ball to Bentley who touches it to Emilio, who finds the net near the far post that he missed earlier.
We go into halftime down 2-5.
We're down 3-5 in the second half when Emi successfully nutmegs the center defender and just misses the far post.
When he gets another chance, under almost the same conditions, he skips the nutmeg and hits the spot he missed the first time and pulls us back to within a point 4-5.

Five minutes later, Emi turns on a corner, sends it through the keeper's legs, but the potential equalizer just misses the far post.
Less than a minute later, he gets a foot on Blake's corner but the ball bounces off the top post. Gareth hustles to keep the ball in play, and then Luke comes up from the defensive end to lift a pass into the box. Emi gets crushed between two defenders, but seconds later, when the ball bounces back his way, he's ready to score his third goal to tie the game 5-5.

With time running out, we're down 5-6 when Devin crosses the ball to Emilio in the box. But though an Emilio attack seems imminent, the ref blows the whistle. Game over.
Emi scores 3--a hat trick--giving him twenty-three goals in eight U-12 games this season.
Our division record is 4-1; our tournament record is 1-2.

Two-Sport Emi

Emi had a soccer game scheduled at 11:30 on Saturday at the same time that Pablo had a game scheduled in Ardmore. Emilio also had a basketball game scheduled on Saturday at 11:30 that he would have to miss because of his prior soccer commitment. But after I got to Ardmore, Mari texted me to say that the start time of Emilio's soccer game had been pushed back to 1:00 p.m., which gave him time to rush to the junior high school gym for the start of the basketball game. Mari filmed the videos below using her cellphone. They include Emi's first basket, a steal followed by a sweet pass on the fast break, and a one-handed steal that ended the first half.
At half-time, Mari took Emilio back to the soccer field, where he was to check in half-an-hour before game time. The videos below, also taken on Mari's cellphone, show a long crossing lead pass that produced the Spartans first score by Devin, and a second pass that set up Gareth for a great shot that didn't get in.

Nutmegging

According to my friends at Wikipedia, "nutmeg" means: "to kick, roll, dribble or throw the ball between an opponent's legs. It only counts if possession is retained after the ball has passed through the opponents legs. This can be done in order to pass to another player, to shoot on goal, or to carry on and retrieve it."

In the chaos that is 5th grade recess, Emilio seems to take as much pleasure from nutmegging his opponents as he does from scoring goals.

Though we did not win our third game in the Norman tournament, Emi executed an impressive nutmeg of one of his opponents. See photo above. That ball has just passed between the defender's feet, and Emilio is about to take control of it again on the other side.

Ada City Championship . . . in Norman

The Norman tourney begins with an 8:30 a.m. match up for the Ada City Championship--the only time Ada's two U-12 teams will face off against each other this year.

Offsides? Looks like an assist to me.

Score! This one, following a corner from Blake, puts us up 2-0.
Two minutes later: another corner, another score. We'll go into half-time leading 3-0.

After Ada Green pulls to within one, 3-2, this breakaway, Emi's third goal, puts the Spartans up 4-2. Shortly afterwards, coach gives Emi a breather. When he calls Emi back in to play defense, the score is tied 5-5. Fortunately, we score one more to win the city championship: 6-5.
After a two-hour break, we face Woodward, the same town that produced the Ardmore tournament champ. The score is 0-0 when Emilio launches this powerful shot.
An hour later: Emi's favorite play of the second game features some relentless Emilio dribbling against six Woodwards, leading to a pass to Devin.
We did not win. Emi did not get many chances.

Emi and KAWS at the Fort Worth Modern

Good Intention, 2015, by KAWS.
Untitled, Sculptural Study, Two-Part Standing Construction, 1978/2007 by Fred Sandback. He Eats Alone (Warm Regards), 2014, by KAWS.