It seems that when I leave things for later, they rarely get done. Hopefully for 2012, I will stop with the notion that I will have time to write a couple of lines regarding something I did in December. I never finished the story on the College Showcase tournament.
The last two days of the tournament were great. I did two matches each day, and they were fun. Good, hard matches with very, very good play. And I called the game that I know how to call, not the one that I thought the kids wanted to have. So it worked out. In the first match, it was an 8pm match, under the lights, lots of people in the stands, and all out to see one kid. #7 from a team called the Texans from Pensacola, FL. The kid had a first touch that was just sick. He was intelligent with the ball and fast. He scored 3 goals and assisted in the 4th. In the end his team won 4-1 and it was quite a show. Thing is that the kids were there to play soccer. Sometimes the kids want to play and sometimes they don't.
The final day was a shorter match, because of the NCAA finals that we were all invited to (but our group did not go to try and make it out on time to head back to Virginia). Again, coaches were ok, though one was all up in arms over a tackle that I called and saw that the kid did not have studs up, so I just called the foul, and did not show plastic. The coach went fairly batty for about 30 seconds and was about 5 seconds away from being tossed when he put a sock in it. Good for him because I stand by my call.
There were a lot of stories, got to meet a lot of interesting people. If you have the chance to take a working vacation like this at any time in your reffing lifetime, I strongly recommend it.
