so far, so good...soccer update

A little update on what´s been going on in my life...

Last Friday was the last practice of the season. Two of our players, Pepe and Naysim (the one that is smitten with Carme) were invited to "play up" with the professional team. Now Tossa is a small town so we don´t have the money and talent pool to be considered a formidable force at any level but still, I am sure Tossa could beat the snot out of the Richmond Kickers. It´s hard to call them a professional team when I see them working their day jobs around town. but to clarify why I was impressed with my two boys, there is a professional team (they get paid to play but not much), a "B team" of professionals (I know more of them than the professional team) and they are boys older than 19 who want to keep playing after the Juvenile age group (my boys), then cadets (14-16), Alevin (12-14), Benjamin (8-12) and so on and so on. So my boys skipped right up with the professional team so it was sad to miss them at our game but still...happy for them.

Also there were 3 boys from our club who have been invited, after the school year, to come to Barcelona´s professional training facility. It´s like some kid in middle school getting picked to join the Celtics basketball youth academy if they had one. Here they invest a lot of time and money into kids who seem to have potential as young as 8 years of age. The kids who make it past the invitational are put up like a boarding school of sorts. That means a lot of sacrifice from the child and the family as an investment into the future and their education.

One boy, Sebastian, from the cadets, was selected. I always thought he was special and this just confirms it. He is a quite lad, maybe 13 years old, who still has not had the benefit of puberty settling in just yet. I was ecstatic to find out that he was selected as one of the 3 (the other 2 being much younger). And as sappy and emotional as I am, I wanted to congratulate and hug him. Still he and I have said not much more than hello to one another due to the language barrier. He has played for me several times when we needed a player to fill in our ranks when our bench was thin (usually from our boys working or going on vacations). He seems to understand me when I give him directions and support from the sideline and make the corrections I bark out. Still maybe one day I can say when he turns professional, that I coached him back when.

On another sappy note, despite language barriers, I can see the jealousy running amok thru the camp from the other boys. Some person went so far as to put a thumbtack thru his face when the picture of him in his FC Barcelona (football club) training gear on our bulletin board at the club. It saddens me to know that we can´t all just find the brightness in one of us getting a shot at the big time. I so wish I could sit and tell him that he should not look back and go forth with speed and determination. Those same people "hating on him" will be here tomorrow, doing nothing but "hating". I want to lift him on my shoulders and let him know that those friends rearing their ugly heads...well they are showing that they were never really friends in the first place and it´s time to let go and move on.

So practices are over and our last game was played. We got slaughtered. Benito got into a scuffle with another player and they both got ejected from the game at minute 12. We were already down 2-0 at that time. Don´t ask me how but before I knew it there were two shots on goal and they sank them both. If I did not know any better, like basketball, they counted one goal as a 2 pointer like it was made from some really far away line like a 3 pt goal! And as soon as I turned my head, bang! The other team scored their 3rd goal. I instantly felt sick.

Still we had the second half to go and most of the squad was screwing up but we had many cadets on the bench to play. We put on the likes of Joel, Sebastian, Jose, Christian, and Gerard...all who will be coming to the team next season. And they played well and struck at goal often. For a second I thought we would come back and win the game but no such luck. We ended up losing 7-5. Oh well.

Still I am actively at the club on a seemingly daily basis. Alex still has practice and I still have classes. It´s not as bad as you think. I do get bombarded with 2 hours of rapid fire conversations, but I find it much easier to read Spanish than to hear it. When I see the words, I can figure out the idea of the focus, but conversations go off in tangents and then swing from Spanish to Catalan to some other gibberish I think they are making up to see if I am paying attention. It´s hard to stay focused but I am still in it. Would look nice to have a Spanish National coaching license. Oh btw, on my test I got a 6.5 out of 10 considering I did the whole test in Spanish.