Disaster Strikes

Sometimes in soccer you get to do the whipping, other times you get whipped. Well tuesday my men's team got WHIPPED. 11-0 to be exact. Yes you read correctly. No, we were not short players. No, we did'nt play the Brazilian national team. We just played awful. At half time, we were down 5-0. We've been there before as a team and have come back. So no one was too worried. By mid-second half, we began to realize and accept that we just could'nt buy a goal that night. For any of my teammates that may find their way to this page, let me break down what exactly went wrong. First off let me state that the score was of NO fault of our goal keeper Steve. He played great actually, making some incredible saves. It was our lack of defending and player marking that got us in trouble. The week before we had played a weaker team. We were able to run the field at our own pace and score on odd man rushes. Not this time. Often caught with only two defenders, we waited for the quick turn over to spring a forward for a fast break. This didnt work because the other team had plenty of speed and was able to get a third defender back every time to help kill our attacks. There was no build up in midfield and no combination passing in our attacking third. Our midfielders wanted to attack, became tired and were unable to defend effectivly. Their speedy forwards and midfielders were able to bring the ball up the field, almost unpressured for the most part and find an open forward making a run downfield. Frustration began to set in and aggressive ball tackling turned into just plain player tackling as our defenders tripped and drug down their forwards. This resulted in two penatly shots and 2 goals for them. As we fell behind in the score, all patience was lost. Normally we are a team that controls the ball. Cycling it around our defenders, through midfield and to the forwards to finish. On this night, it was the oppisote. We resorted to send repeated long balls up the field in hopes of getting a lucky shot. We probably connected no more than 4 consecutive passes and forced or hurried 80% of our shots on goal. This resulted in lots of easy saves for their keeper. A long story short, we just fell apart. It looks like it will take at least one more season for our team to be ready to take the tittle. We will now play in the third place match in the play-offs. Bummer.

Almost There

My co-ed soccer team scored a big win last friday night with an 8-1 win. Also during our big win, my girlfriend Jenna got her first ever assist for a goal! She recieved the ball at the top left of the keepers penalty box. She spun to her right and fired a left footed shot which hit the wall just outside the net. The rebound came rolling right out to the penalty spot where another one of our girl players finished it off with a goal! I was very proud of her when she got the assist. This is her first soccer season ever so she's still learning.
On a totally different note, if you are into video editing on your PC and are looking for a cheap and easy video editing software suite... check out Microsoft Movie Maker 2.0. Its free to download from Microsofts site and is a MAJOR upgrade from the previous version. In a short amount of time you will be editing video clips, adding music and special effects. Then tell it what you want to use the video for, (the web, CD, LAN) and it will help you choose the correct format and compression. I had it pretty much mastered in 30 minutes.

HATE!!!

If you're like me, you absolutly hate pop-up ad's on the web. It's really insulting to think the ad's are put there with the expectation that we will be distracted from the site we came to see, enough to click on the ad and buy their product. Anyhow, don't waste your money on pop-up "killer" software. I saw one of these programs at walmart for $30! Consider this my download tip of the week. Go to www.avantbrowser.com. Download their browser. It has a built-in pop up killer that works great. It also has a ton of cool web surfing enhancements. Its not actually a completely new browser. It uses Internet Explorer as its basis. But, its free and very very good at what it does.

Big Win!

Last night my men's A league soccer team scored a big win over a rival team, 7-4. This gives us the 3 points needed to move us closer to second place and into the finals! We played this team about a month ago and had to come from behind to end the game with a 6-6 tie. It felt good to get the win this time around. I gotta give props to our keeper Steve. He was on his game, making diving and quick reaction saves on practically every shot he faced. The Goal of the Game goes to Cody for his almost half field volley that caught their keeper standing off his goaline, scoring a crucial goal. And lastly, I cant forget Dustin (tenatious D). His relentless defensive hustle and constant runs into the offense, helped us out on both ends of the field. One more game and one more win needed to make it into the final match!

Time Flys

Well it seemed like just last year I was writing about playing paintball. Oh wait, it was. Christmas and New Years Eve have come and gone and im finally getting back to updating my blog! Xmas was all good here. Got some cool things I wanted. Spent New Years Eve at a pub called The Londoner with my girlfriend, Jenna. Its a sports bar with a small dance floor and a very English theme to the place. Go figure. So today I sit, in a Novell training class, overlooking Addison Texas from the 12th floor of a high rise office building. Im here with a co-working trying to do the "advance my knowledge-advance my career" thing. So far its all good. Stay tuned!