School games are played Tuesday and Thursdays until 530. Meaning she missed most of the rest of her recreation league practices. Coach Brittany was totally fine with this thankfully! But Alyssa realized she really missed the girls she played with on that team! Practice everyday after school means packing an extra bag of soccer gear, along with the large back pack full of school books. Far away games mean getting home at 7pm to start homework.
School soccer is different than rec league soccer in many ways. Let's start with field size. School team plays on the football field and rec league plays on a field about 2/3 that size. About half the school team plays travel ball. Talk about aggressive....and they use EVERY legal part of their bodies to make contact with that ball! We even saw one girl on another team get knocked out by heading a kicked ball. It was kicked from the goalie box to about the 50 yard line. These girls are FAST too. Kaylee, who used to play rec league with us and everyone thought she looked like a road runner when she ran. Well, she looks like she is standing still sometimes in these games, yet she is running full speed. Amazing. Don't get me wrong. Kaylee runs at lightning speed. School soccer girls are NOT afraid of the ball, at all. Sometimes they head the ball back and forth so many times that I think we are at a volleyball game. They do these ballet looking kicks, think split in mid air, and they actually make contact with the ball AND make it go where they want it! One girl on our team can do a corner kick and make that ball curve in at the last moment and go into the goal!
Though the school team is not filled with her friends or even people that Alyssa really likes, she has learned a lot of skills and needless to say her endurance has improved drastically. She has played well and hopes to play next year, when her friends from the rec league will also be on her school team (they are all in 6th grade since rec league is divided by age, not grade).
It's also very hard to get pictures at school games. The first hinderance is the size of the field. Then factor in the speed at which these girls run and the fact that the bleachers are level with the playing field. We did get to play one game at the high school, so I had real bleachers to sit in and take pictures from! So, all these games are from the New Century vs Crane's Creek Middle School game. New Century won 8-0.
If you are having a problem spotting Alyssa, look for the black cleats with yellowish green stripes and blue laces or number 21 in purple.
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