Week 1 Fall 2007

Ok, let me get this right this IS the FALL 2007 season, right. We forgot to tell Mother Nature, it was HOT this weekend. I don't know what the official temperature was, but it felt like it was over 100 degrees (and that was in the shade). I hope next week is a little cooler, maybe 99 degrees.

Since it was the first games of the season, there are always things that pop up. The new field lay out confused some folks, but over all everyone I talked to liked it. We have 100 teams playing this season and almost 900 players.

A lot of the U6 coaches were upset that there were no goals for the U6 teams. Vicki Easterday said her phone and email was loaded. After talking to Vicki, I have ordered 12 pop up goals from the AYSO store. Hopefully they will be here this week. Everyone likes the new goals we have. The first teams of the day put them in place, put out the corner flags, but the last games of the day did not put them back.

I heard of some kids that got sick, a U10 keeper lost the pizza she had for lunch on the goal line. The pizza was cleaned up and play continued with a new keeper. One of my U8 players could not play his 3 quarter. I found out he had eaten a bag of chips during the 2nd quarter while he was out. Plus he was not drinking any water. I urged the mom to get some liquids in him.

On the referee side, we were a little short, some U10 and U8 games did not have referees. I do want to recognize some of our youth referees. Kelsie Shipley and Shelby Perkins who did their first U8 games Saturday. I also want to recognize Kasey Voiles, she served as a mentor for Kelsie and Shelby during their games (there were no adult referees around). Youth referees helping youth referees, its great the kids step up when parents and adults will not. The girls all did a great job and I am very proud of them. Kelsie even did a second U8 game that did not have a referee sign up. At least the game schedules are out and posted, maybe some more referees will sign up for this weeks games. I do want to thank the referees that came out and did games. Another referee I want to thank is David Lister. I do not know how many games he did, but he was on the fields from the first games to the last.

Russ Wise our new Coach Administrator was walking around answering questions and passing out information on a skills training to be held every Friday. The information is posted at the fields and should be on the website soon.

The Security officer said that parking was going well no real problems (except the guy with the Florida tags that tried to go the wrong way). He also felt the new field lay out was helping with parking. The over flow lot on the hill was being used a lot more.

The trash cans were all full, at least the ones that were set out. Knew we forgot something. The same with the recycle cans for plastic bottles. Not all of them got set out. We will get them all set out by next weekend.

We did have a old timer come out and referee a game. David Holt the Area 5B Referee Administrator did a U14 boys game. It was good to see David on the fields again. David was the Regional Referee Administrator when I started coaching in AYSO.

The only bad things I heard about were from a U12 game on field 10. The Regional CVPAs when down to watch for a while. The referee told me he wrote up both coaches for unsportsman like behavior. Oh well.