Chapter 195

April 30, 2018 (Monday)

Dear Ms. Diary,

Last year, Baskerville was a 2-13-1 team, 8^th place of nine teams. They were a young team, too, so they should be better this year, and their 1-1-0 record so far might provide some suggestion that they are better. However, even Argon blew their doors off.

Various of the Moms were again present, and we got to grab some time with them. We were all surprised when Tina was one of the mothers present, and I overheard some of the conversation between Brit and her.

“Thanks for coming, Mom.”

“Tell me about ... why you’re here and what your job here is.”

Brit’s voice lowered a little bit, so I caught only portions of her answer, but I heard “wives,” “fun,” and “satisfying,” so got the gist of her response. I felt a little guilty listening in, but Brit had asked me to do so; I just wish she had not lowered her voice so much for that answer. The rest was mostly plain vanilla, being about her tasks on the team, some of which she just mentioned, others she explained. There was one very interesting bit.

“Yes, I do consider myself married to a large portion of the team, both players and coaching staff. Of course, the coaching staff is mostly comprised of teenagers, with Coach and Andy being the only ones who aren’t.” I didn’t hear the question, but Brit replied, “No, Coach is not involved with us, but Andy is.”

After another question I missed, Brit became heated, saying, “Mom, if you ever have anything to do with my spouses... any of them ... being arrested, I will never speak to you again. NEVER,” the last word said quietly, but vehemently. She listened to something Tina said, then responded, “We’re perfectly well aware that it’s odd, but we love each other and are in love with each other. I’m never voluntarily leaving them, and I’m following them wherever they go.”

At halftime, Meka was handing out attagirls, and she began with the D.

“Picture early in a soccer game in which a young-but-plucky girls’ team on their home pitch is arrayed against the reigning state champ. That team seems to be playing much better than the all-but-disaster of their team’s previous year, having won half their games. Only a few minutes in, they catch their mighty opponent too far forward on O and execute a superb counter, with both front-line wingers and their center half getting deep into the opponent’s half. They have Goliath in a bind given their three-on-two advantage. Their left wing sets up their best shooter, the right wing, by dribbling straight at Goliath’s center back, forcing her to commit to an excellent fake, and sliding the ball to her right wing who slams the ball toward the right portion of the goal about waist-high. One can almost imagine the jubilation about to erupt from their young throats because they scored against Goliath, a team that, so far, had scored 41 goals in four games, and surrendered only four. Can you feel their excitement?”

None of us had heard anything like this play recap to explain the awarding of an attagirl, and we were ... not enthralled, but not far from it, either, and many of us agreed that we could feel the excitement.

“Imagine their extreme disappointment when Goliath’s goalie correctly anticipated at which side of the goal the right wing would shoot and got enough hand on the ball in an all-out dive to her left to move the ball’s course... almost far enough to pass outside the left post. Imagine the sudden realization of their center half, who was playing safety, that the ball was coming out to her after it caromed off what she considered the right post. She quickly moved forward to meet the ball at the penalty stripe and smashed the ball straight up the middle of the goal.

“Can you imagine her jubilation at watching the ball as it blistered past Goliath’s center back who represented the only chance of keeping the ball out of the net? Can you also imagine her consternation and, mostly hidden then, but still present, amazement as she watched that center back stare down that ball that was moving as quickly as that center half knew how to make it move and, seemingly calmly, head that ball back into play?”

We variably moaned and cheered as Meka worked on our emotions and I marveled at ... my wife’s amazing array of abilities.

“Now, can you imagine that center half considering her redemption when the ball came straight back to her, but also her realization that the ball was at an awkward height and that she could hear the footsteps of someone else on Goliath’s D seeming like she was running up her backside? Can you imagine the struggle, the very, very brief struggle in her mind between trying to trap the ball, then shoot with the chance of not having sufficient time to do both, or throwing a leg up in the hope that she would get lucky and hit the ball just well enough that it headed toward the goal somewhere away from that center back and the recovering goalie?

Meka looked around the room, then asked, “If this were fiction – I did ask you to imagine, what might have happened next?”

Padme stated, “The center half gets enough of her left foot on the ball in an awkward position that it heads toward what she would call the left post. That evil center back would scramble toward that post and the ball ... but she would be just a nanosecond late and have to watch it dribble into the goal.”

There was much laughing.

Meka smiled at Padme, then said, “But this isn’t fiction. Instead, it’s an overly dramatized version of reality. What happened next?”

“Sophia happened.”

Meka turned to look at Coach, then turned back, responding, “Indeed. Sophia happened. She trapped the weak shot on her right thigh, looked up the pitch, obviously saw Tonda was already headed the other way at speed, and boomed the ball deep. She probably kept watching as Tonda calmly trapped the ball at nearly full speed, booted it ahead of herself, outran their safety to the ball, deked the goalie out of not only her short, but her panty as well, and tapped the ball into the goal.

“While there are attagirls to hand out for that ... and subsequent plays, what, overall, was the most lasting effect of that entire series of events?”

Meka called on Lissa when her hand rose into the air, and Argon’s sweeper answered, “A demoralized Baskerville.”

Quietly, Meka responded, “Yes. A demoralized Baskerville that had three almost point-blank shots at a goal on a perfectly executed counterattack ... Well, perfectly executed up to their left wing’s pass, then had to watch as we returned the favor, except that our counterattack was perfect.”

“It doesn’t happen often, but things like that can change the fate of games. Oh, there was probably no way that Baskerville was going to beat us, but the best chance they’d have had to do so was to demoralize us with a very quick and very early counterattack to get first blood. An attagirl to Mila for a great save on the initial shot, then five attagirls go to Sophia.” There was some surprised whispering, but Meka continued over it, “The first for immediately recognizing that she had to be the goalie when Mila laid out to make the first save and correctly putting herself in the middle of the goal. Sophia, did you consider rushing her?”

“I did, but the ball got back out to her so quickly and I thought with Mila getting to her feet and, possibly, stopping anything near the left post, she might rush the shot, which I thought would be a better option than me rushing her and have her simply sidestep me and slide the ball into the other side of the goal.”

Meka nodded at Sophia, looked around, then continued, “Sophia got lucky in that their second shooter was counting on power rather than finesse to get the ball in the goal. For power, one often sacrifices placement. If she were a striker, particularly a skilled and experienced striker such as Char or Rhee, one would hope she would take just a little more time and use more finesse. In the excitement she must have felt at seeing the ball carom to her, she seemed not to consider simply trapping the ball and making Sophia choose what direction she went. Sophia earns her second attagirl for staring that near rocket in the eyes and heading the ball back upfield. Their shooter did the best she could with the second shot considering that she had no good shooting options and Smythe was only a step away from interfering with those options.

“Sophia earned her third attagirl by being calm for the next shot. She could see as well as we could that Smythe was on the girl’s butt and that more help was closing. At that point, rushing the shooter was of no help, so she stood her ground and stopped the shot, at which point, she immediately earned her fourth attagirl. Instead of blindly booting the ball, either upfield or out a sideline, she did her job. Any D personnel, what was her job?”

Crewe blurted, “Assess her options, first by looking upfield for streakers. She probably had a few seconds before she had to default to booting the ball somewhere upfield or out of bounds.”

I saw approval pass across Meka’s face, and she put on a little smile, then responded, “I echo Coach’s words to you from the other day. Please practice well and get your body to do a lot of soccer things automatically, as your soccer brain is working very well.”

“Sophia found Tonda on her horse – and Tonda had already earned her first attagirl of the day by getting on that horse when she might have just lived the relief of Sophia doing her job so well. Sophia then earned her fifth attagirl for putting a bomb virtually on Tonda’s feet. Tonda earned her second by doing her job so well and putting the ball in the back of the net.”

She went on to give attagirls to the other scorers – Mia with two, Padme, and Dakota – and their various assisters – Haven, Kanda, and Lissa, and, then, for other standout actions on the pitch.

At the final whistle, I trotted over to their right wing and told her to keep up her good efforts and that our goalie got a bit lucky by guessing which way she would go with her shot.

“Thanks, uh ... You’re Beth Williams. Yes?” When I nodded, she added, “It’s almost not fair how good your team is.”

“And you probably know full well how we got here. You wouldn’t have six goals this season if you hadn’t worked very hard. Oh, we’re also lucky, as our coach had never previously had a team ... with this much firepower, and that’s at least partly random chance. Additionally, 16 of our roster of 23 are in their last year at this level and we have just one 12-year-old and she’s one of the better players on the team. I just wanted to say ‘hi’ and encourage you to keep working. You showed some brilliance in your play that, unfortunately for you and your team, was not rewarded. If you and your team keep improving, we’ll see you in the tournament, as it’s obvious the team has become better than it was last year.”

“Uh, thanks, Beth.”

Because everyone had voted to wait to shower until getting home, we were gathered around the coaching staff at the end of a very satisfying second half in which Krypton had added seven goals to make the final score 12-0. Kim had given out a ton of attagirls and Coach had followed her.

“I want to make a few general and a couple of specific comments about the game and the season, then we’ll get Liya’s synopsis of the near future, get the game ball awarded, and get everyone heading home. My comments are in no particular order, but I want to start with Dakota. I want to elaborate a little on Meka’s comments to tell you that your positioning on the corner kick and, particularly, your immediate reaction to their goalie blocking Char’s shot were excellent. Had you delayed even a few seconds in attacking the rebound, the hole you had would have closed. Excellent job.

“With Beth’s three assists today, she’s averaging slightly more than a hat trick of assists per game. That’s simply unprecedented in my experience as a Coach. Granted, it’s over only five games, but we play only 16 league games in the regular season, so we’re nearly a third of the way through the season. Of course, that doesn’t count our six non-league games.

“There are many other crazy aspects to our season so far. The Argon lineup has tallied 19 goals, which is nearly four a game ... while playing only half-games. An average of four a game ... along with anything like a reasonable D in past years would usually get a team into the league tournament.”

She looked around and let that sink in.

Kanda raised her hand, then said, “What you seem to be suggesting is that if we were our own team, we might meet Krypton in the tournament.”

There was much chuckling, and Coach smiled, answering, “Precisely. We could field two tournament teams out of our roster. Of course, with only one sub between the two, that could be exhausting, but that’s one of my points. While I expected us to run away with the regular-season league title, I’ve been very impressed with how well Argon is playing. In fact, Argon seems to be on a bit of an upswing in goals scored per game, having tallied – in order – 4, 3, 3, 4, and 5 goals. Also interesting about Argon is that each member of the front line has five goals, and there are only two players in the league that are not on this team that have at least that many, and we just held one of them scoreless. That means that Argon’s front-line members are tied for fifth place in the league behind those two girls’ six each, Char’s seven, Civia’s eight, and Rhee’s nine.

“As for assists, though...” There was some chuckling after which Coach continued with, “Of course, Beth is blowing away the league with her 16. Who do you think is in second place?”

Mia shouted out, “Argon’s own, Lissa Schmitt! Go, Lissa!”

There was much cheering.

“Yes, with Lissa’s six, we have a one-two punch there, but Char’s also in the top ten tied with four other girls at four, with three girls having five. Of course, recall that we have yet to play any of the top teams from last year, but I’m happy with how we’re playing.” She looked around, then finished with, “Liya?”

“Good game, girls. While I have the floor, I’d like to make one comment about the game. Sophia, there’s no way that I could have stood in front of that shot so calmly and then headed it. I’m in awe of you, Girl!”

There was much rejoicing, and Sophia came in for a lot of back pats and a few hugs. I think the Go5 has influenced the team about hugs, as everyone is much huggier than they were even last year.

Liya restarted, “Unfortunately, unless Grass Valley can reschedule in the next two weeks, that’s our last game until May 17^th. However, because of that, we have a vote to take, and only players can vote. Coach is giving us two options to deal with nearly three weeks without games. After I’ve told you the options, I’ll call for a voice vote. If that isn’t definitive, we’ll do a roll-call vote. Understood?” When we acknowledged her, she continued with, “The first option is that we’ll cut practice back every day, ending no later than 5:30, possibly earlier on some days. The second option is ... having the next two Wednesdays off entirely.”

There was tumult and much apparent excitement about having a day off, but Rhee shouted out, “Why Wednesdays?”