Playing For Pizza

Careful. We don't want to learn from this. -Calvin and Hobbes

After all the fall training we were set for our final tournament, the Nike Classic Cup hosted by the Chicago Sockers FC. I was very excited to see how far we had come since the beginning of the fall and how we would stack up against two of the clubs whom I respect a great deal; Team Chicago and the Sockers.  Both clubs produce very good players and teams whom play the game with a similar style that I want my teams to play.  It would be a busy weekend with having both our U10 Boys and our U10 Girls teams down there.  The tournament director was nice enough to work out the schedule so I could be at every game except one.  I would be coaching both the U10 Girls and the U12 Girls and helping out with the U10 Boys.

We would be missing 4 of our players for the tournament so I tried to get guest players from Minnesota to come and join us, but with the NSC Cup, HS playoffs, and the final weekend of league games going on no one from here was able to join us.  I didn't want to go to this tournament with only 14 players, especially since a couple of our girls who were going, were knicked up and not sure how much they could play, so I contacted Meghan Dames from the Eclipse Select club and asked her if she had any girls who would be interested in playing with us.  We were lucky to get 3 players from her team to help us out during the weekend: 1 of the girls could play both days and we would have 2 other players who could each play on one of the days.  We had played against this Eclipse team, they have different Academy sites like we do, at our last tournament so the girls were familiar with each other.  It is going to be great to be able to have their help for the weekend and it is nice to establish a good relationship with another very good team.

I wanted to get an early start on the trip so I planned on leaving around 10am.  John Grisham's book Playing For Pizza would provide the entertainment for the trip down there.  It is not the typical Grisham book since it is not a legal thriller.  It is about Rick Dockery, who has played with various teams in both the U.S. and Canada, and has usually ended up on each roster as the third-string quarterback. During a disastrous AFC play-off game in Cleveland, Rick throws three interceptions in eleven minutes, allowing the Denver Broncos to beat the Browns and to advance to the Super Bowl. Rick is injured (and we see him in the hospital, in a scene reminiscent of "Jerry Maguire," complete with his agent hovering over him), is cut from the team, and is the most unpopular man in town, if not in the entire NFL. With his options limited, he agrees to go to Italy to play for the Parma Panthers for a season. The Panthers have two other paid Americans on the team as well as a dedicated group of Italians who play the game for free. The Panther's goal is to win the Italian Super Bowl and Rick is their new found savior.

Driving for 6 hours and listening to a book that devoted half of the pages to describing how incredible Italian food was, made me hungry. 

The usual short trip to Schaumberg was made longer since I had to go to Libertyville, IL first to pick up our guest players passes.  The trip was going along great until just past Milwaukee when the road forked into two separate single lanes with construction on either side.  I chose the wrong side and soon found our side going incredible slow, while the other side was flying.  I couldn't figure out why we were going so slow until after 30 minutes of this the bus that was one car in front of us put on his hazards and officially stopped moving.  As we maneuvered our way through construction cones my jaw dropped when I saw that this bus was the entire reason that we were going so slow.  There was no one ahead of him!  He waited 30 minutes to signal that he was in trouble!  Idiot!  I felt bad for the people behind the semi truck a couple of cars behind me since there was no way he could maneuver through the cones and they would be stuck.

After I got the screaming out of my system we were able to meet up with the Eclipse manager and along with getting us the passes she gave us the short cut to Schaumberg and we were there in under 30 minutes.

Check in at this tournament is really easy.  They have you mail in everything ahead of time so all you have to do is show up and let them check off your passes.  The process takes less than 5 minutes and it is great.  Every tournament should do this.

After checking the team in I went over to the field to watch a couple of games.  The U12 Sockers vs Campton United game and the Team Chicago vs NSA Premier and the U10 Chicago Fire Jrs vs Plainfield game.

It was nice to get to check out the competition before we played them.  The Sockers were good all over, but they had one incredible fast and skilled forward who scored both of Sockers goals and was by far the most dangerous player on the field.  We will have a hard time finding an answer to her.  Team Chicago is a solid team.  No super stars, but a bunch of very good players and some very skilled center mids.  Our U13's played them in the USA Cup last summer and I was looking forward to this match up and I thought we would match up well against them.

By the time I was done watching it was 9pm and I headed over to the hotel to make sure that most of the girls had gotten in.  As soon as I got there the girls informed me of the crisis that our hotel did not have a pool.  I thought that they were joking.  What hotel didn't have a pool?  How could the tournament recommend a hotel with no pool?  Oh well, guess I wont need to remind the girls that they only get 30 minutes of swimming each day and no hot tubbing is allowed.  After that I called over to the boys hotel to make sure they were ok at their hotel down the street.  It was too bad we couldn't get everyone at the same hotel.

After everything was all set I remembered that I had not eaten since we left and I was recalling all the talk about great Italian food.  So naturally we decided on The Weber Grill Restaurant.  While it most definately was not italian food, the restaurant did not disappoint and I had I had a great steak. 

After the day of travel I was ready for tomorrow to begin.