Monday, August 30, 2010

Oh it hurts...

Who said you needed to prep for 7 matches in two days? I will be the first to admit that I did fairly little in terms of physical preparation this summer. I ate poorly, and did not do much in terms of exercise, but this weekend's 7 matches did something for me that I was not expecting, and that was to reinvigorate my desire to get back in shape. So I plan on running some during the week and see if I cannot get back into the form I was prior to the last season ending (and then staying there at least during the long winter off season).

Regarding the actual matches, there was little to throw in. They were good, I had a great time and was happy to be back. Saturday was four U12 matches and Sunday was a bit more challenging in the U14 Boys and U14 Girls brackets of a local tournament.

Sidebar here - During this tournament, they used a system of bonus points to determine seeding into the semifinal round, so in one bracket, Team A and Team B both beat Team C. Team A won 12-0 and Team B won 3-0. When Team A and Team B played each other, they tied 2-2, so who should be the team that goes as the first seed and who is the second seed? Well, due to the weird bonus points that they had for this tournament, both Team A and Team B were deadlocked and went to a PK shootout instead of looking at overall goals scored. Just thought it strange, since 12-0 and 3-0 are two very different results.

Back to the matches, I know my center where I had a full set of ARs was not difficult, but I am also sure that my diagonals were atrocious. I was all over the place, still, it worked out well as I was able to get the offsides calls ok and the fouls seemed to be decent as well. All in all, just glad to be back, but man are my muscles sore today.

1 comment:

Geoff said...

Haha, don't worry, I'm still recovering too from this weekend with a bunch of older girl matches that left me exhausted by the end of the day (stupid summer finally decided to show up... I am such a wuss now with the heat).

Likewise I realized I've been a little sloppy in maintaining my physical conditioning, so I too need to fix some things. Don't overstress yourself though, you're going to gain fitness through the season too (probably like last year) so keep it somewhat easy in your mid-week workouts till you're not getting blown out on the weekends.

As for diagonals, they're highly overrated. As long as you're where you need to be to see what you need to see (well, and sell the call haha), you did just fine!