Week 4 of the spring season was one that I will remember for a long time. I would like to thank everyone who stopped by and wished me a happy birthday, or sang happy birthday to me. I especially want to thank the 3 main ones, Amy, Liesl, and my wife Pat. I know when your birthdays are too. I also want to thank my U8 girl’s team and Mike Moody’s U8 girl’s team that sang to me before our game on Saturday. It was a great day for soccer. The weather was great, sunny and warm with a light breeze.

Things were back to normal at the concession stand. Selling sausage biscuits and coffee in the morning, cokes, nachos and snow cones in the afternoon. My wife even helped out selling snow cones. We made enough last from week to pay the security guard and have a little left over. He stayed busy most of the day. With some of the upper division games getting canceled, we had some spaces open for cars, but not many.

I do have some Patterson humor to report. I made a visit to one of the Patterson buildings. The lid was down, and there were footprints on the lid. Judging by the direction of the footprints, a little boy figured out a way to use the little sink, just like the big boys. From all indications he has a good aim. No liquid on the walls or floor. It’s not much but I thought it was cute.

You may have noticed some men and women in camouflage walking around. They are part of a unit that was doing some ground navigation. They started around 9 am and were going to be there till around 10:30 pm. The Captain I talked to said they were doing day and night navigation. Every now and then a couple of them would come out of the woods, look around and head back in the woods. For me it was good to see them out walking around.

I hope you got your copy of the Regional News letter. The first edition for the spring is out. It is also on line on our website. Complete with color pictures. Thanks to Leanne for doing such a great job.

Also if you visit our webpage scroll down to the pictures link. There are some new pictures of our VIP kids, Soccer Moms, players and referees posted. Take a look, if you click on the photo you can get a bigger view. Also if you have a Yahoo or Flickr account (free) you can login and add comments.

We were very short on referees; a lot of U8 and U10s did not have referees. Maybe the coaches with out referees will figure out if they have a parent who is a referee, and then they will always have one for their games. We did have a couple of new referees who did their first games as Centers and AR’s. A couple of sad notes we had a youth referee, who did her first center last week come out and sign up to AR 3 U10 games. She did 2 games in the morning, went and played in her U14 game, and came back to AR a game. She did the job of 3 adults. The sad part is one of the parents in one of the U10 games had to run their mouth about an off side call she made. Now she is trained, and she plays, she knows what off side is a lot better than some loud mouth parent. The Center Referee had a talk with the parent. I hope and pray that she comes back to referee again. She is a good youth referee. We have more youth and adult referees quit because of parents running their mouths. That team will be watched closely. If it happens again the parent will be gone. Another youth referee was an AR on a U16 game, because no adult referees were available. Sure enough a parent from the visiting team started in on the youth referee. The Center Referee talked to the coach, and told him it the parent says one more thing the game is over till they leave. The AR’s mom (who is also a board member) went and stood behind the loud mouth. The coach of the visiting team turned to his parents and told them all to “SHUT UP, and not say another word to or about the referee’s”. I have never been able to understand why someone who will not step up and volunteer to be a referee; will run down someone who does. If there are any referees reading this, we need you. Ray Stratton a “well seasoned referee” was doing a U10 game. He told the coaches, once this game starts t his is my field, and you do not come on my field with out my permission. The coach wanted to argue the point. He did not win. Ray said he was a little bit bothered because the coaches would not shake hands after the game, and the players did not thank the referee for doing the game. I have to agree with Ray. The referees are volunteers; most do not have kids playing on the team they are refereeing. Is it too much to ask the players to thank the referee? My U8 girls do, some even hug the referee. I am going to ask the division coordinators to remind all the coaches to have their players thank the referee, and that goes for coaches too. Other wise the coach better get use to refereeing their teams games. I’ll get off my soapbox now.

There was a report of a game that was a blow out. The division coordinator for that division will have a talk with the coach. The region has a no slaughter policy. If you get 5 goals ahead, you pull back. Check out the coach’s page on our web site. It has been there since day 1. This is designed so EVERYONE has fun. Remember, SAFE, FUN, FAIR. The rest of the games were pretty good from what I heard. Most were close, good games. I heard that from a lot of coaches.

LifeTouch was next to field 4A taking pictures. I think they will be back to finish up on April 14th. Mike Moody borrowed the mower and mowed down the knee-high grass so pictures could be made.

I’ll see you on the fields again in 2 weeks. We take next weekend off for Easter. From the weather reports the high next week will be in the 50s. A good time for a week off.

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George