Well, week 6 was a wet, spring day Saturday, for the morning games. But the sun came out and we had some great soccer, at least I think so. Thanks to Lynn Waller, Chris Mott and Bill Mize for going to the fields at 7am to check on the field conditions. Burt English a U19 girl’s coach from Region 275, thanked me for keeping the fields open and letting the girls play. The game was a good one; it ended in a 2 – 2 tie. We also had a U12 coach thank us for letting the kids play. From the emails I got we were one of only a few regions that played on Saturday.

The concession stand did well. Bennie and Gail have taken over the snow cone sales. They have a better price and produce a lot less trash. The snow cones are like the ones some of us use to get at the fair when I was a kid. Due to the lower cost, several coaches bought their whole team snow cones. Plus we are now dealing with only 1 vendor who will be there every week. Abbie Wyatt had her bake sale with lots of brownies, cup cakes and cookies. She also had lemonade. Amy Wyatt emailed me that the final total was $300. All the money raised will be used to buy toys and books for Children’s Hospital. Channel 10 was there to interview Abbie. The interview was on TV at 6 pm, 11 pm Saturday and 8 am on Sunday. Hope you all saw it. Abbie was wearing her blue AYSO region jersey.

The fields held up fairly well. Fields 1, 2 and 3 looked pretty good at the end of the day. I did not make it down to field 4. Field 5 took a beating and so did Field 6, but since we will not be on them next Saturday they should recover. There was some talk about closing field 6, but it was checked and the last 2 games were played on it.

No Patterson humor this week. However, someone did back in to a Police car. The officer was there to watch his child’s game, and someone backed in to him. I don’t know who I would rather be, the person that had to tell the officer that you hit his car, of the on duty officer explaining that his car got hit while he was watching his child’s soccer game. As it was pointed out, we are part of Knox County Park system, and Officers (City and County) do patrol the area.

Referees were at a shortage this week. Special thanks to Bill Mize, David Lister, Chris Mott, Liesl Harrison, Lynn Waller, Dat Tran and all the referees that did come out and do games. We really appreciate you, even if we do not always agree with all your calls. We had a request for another referee class. We have at least 8 parents that want to take the course. Bill is looking in to it. We did have a U14 game where 5 yellow cards were issued. The slick field conditions may have had a hand in it.

There are no games next week, the U6 and U8 maybe playing. But the U10 – U19 will be at the Area 5B games. The Region has 9 teams entered, 2 U10 girls, 1 U10 boys, 2 U12 boys, 3 U12 girls, and 1 U14 girl’s teams. Other teams can do make up games if they have referees

The only problem was a non-volunteer that tried to coach his son’s team. Amy Waller explained to the person that he was not allowed to coach, and that when acting as a club referee (AR) he could not be coaching his son’s team.

One of our U14 girl’s coaches was just itching to get her girls back on the field. Two weeks with out a game makes you want to get out and put in a garden. All went well the girls got to play and the game was a good one. It was a 0 – 0 tie.

As some of you know, Thursday some non-AYSO folks were taking our corner flags. So Saturday after the last game, we pulled all the corner flags. They are in the field house, and will need to be put back out when the fields are used again. We have invested too much money is getting good corner flags to have them stolen. We may have to let the coaches with the first games put them out and the coaches with the last game pick them up. Those that helped pull the corner flags were Liesl Harrison, Mandy Harrison, and Dalton Conrad.

There was one character that dropped by the fields on Saturday. He was on his way to Oak Ridge. It was the one and only Mike Compton. He said after next week he should be free to do games. He may even drag his twin along.

All in all a good day for soccer. Hope to see everyone back at the fields on May 6.

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George