Nike Classic Cup 08

  The fall is always a super busy time with so many of our coaches coaching college and high school teams.  This year was my first year in the last 3 that I have not done high school because I was too busy with all of the club teams that I am working with.  This weekend is the wrap up for the fall for many of my teams with a couple of them playing in the NSC Cup here in town: U9 boys and girls, U10 White Girls, U10 boys, U12 Blue and White girls and all our other teams (U10 Blue Girls, U11 Girls, U11 Blue Boys, U13 Blue and White) are going to one of my favorite tournaments, the Nike Classic Cup presented by the Chicago Sockers.   

It will be a busy weekend for me as I am the head coach for the U11 Girls and both the U13 Blue and White teams plus I will be overseeing all of the other teams that we have down there to gauge what they need to work on over the winter. Thankfully the organizers of the tournament have done a great job of scheduling so there are no conflicts.  Also, the facility has lights, so on Saturday my first game will start at 9:30am and my last game will kick off at 8:30pm with games all the way through the day.  Weather forecast is 70 degrees and sunny so I am all ready to go.

I've got many entries to catch up on including finishing up the Madison Tournament, lots of training sessions, and the formation of the Blue and White teams, but I wanted to throw this up here before we leave tomorrow.  For the U13's this will be the first tournament as Blue and White teams and I am super excited to see how both teams perform.

Here are the schedules for both of the U13 teams:

U13 Blue

Saturday

1:00 PM    U13 Blue vs Sockers #18 Nation

6:00 PM    U13 Blue vs FC Utd #15 RII

Sunday

8:00 AM    U13 Blue vs Darien Dynamo

U13 White

Saturday

3:30 PM    U13 White vs Carole Stream

8:30 PM    U13 White vs Windy City

Sunday

11:15 AM U13 White vs Spartan FC

The Whites scrimmaged last Sunday against a mixture of our U14 group and played extremely well so I am very excited to see what they do as a group in all of their games this weekend.

The game that I am looking forward to the most, for the Blues, is our first game against the Sockers.  We tied them 1-1 last year in this same tournament and we lost to them last summer 1-2 at the US Club Regionals.  As I've said before, I am a big fan of the way this Sockers team plays and I believe that both us and the Sockers will be 2 of the top teams in the Region this year so it will be a good measuring stick for where we are at.

Madison Championship: Nike vs Swoosh- The Show Down

Coming soon. . .

Madison Round 3

Coming soon. . . 

Madison Round 2

  After round 1 we were able to get some food between the games.  The grocery shoppers have been doing a great job all weekend with the food.  

Team Nike's 2nd game of the day was against Heartland from Iowa.  After only scoring once in the first game and struggling a little bit with the ideas, everything clicked this game and things got ugly quickly.   The girls scored early and often en route to a 9-0 victory.  Stoker scored the second goal of the game and her first goal ever for this team.  By the second half AJ, who never wants to come out of the goal, reluctantly agreed to come out and she scored a goal and set up another one.

At one point in the second half AJ was played through on a ball that their goalie came out for and it was a 50-50 ball.  AJ decided to slide for the ball and she got their just before their goalie did and her shot went just wide.  In the process of sliding she ended up colliding with the other teams goalie which brought on a tirade from their coach who yelled at us why would we have our player slide to take out their goalie when we were winning by so much?!!  In my head I thought "Are you kidding me?  The last thing I want her to do is slide and get injured in this game.  Why would I ever want my goalie to slide and possible get injured while playing forward?"  But, instead of saying that, I apologized to him and said that we would talk to her about it.  I could definitely understand why he would be upset.

I knew coming down to this tournament that we might have a game like this one if everything clicked for us.  The girls were able to move the ball around the field very well and they were able to finish a lot of the chances we created.

The next game that I was off to was the U12's game against Kenosha.  They had to battle hard to get a 2-1 victory in a much closer game than it should have been as we missed a bunch of chances.

Swoosh's second game was against Peawaukee and it started at 3:45pm so I missed the first half of the game.

After Swooshes troubles scoring in the first game they started off quickly in the second game scoring in the 5th minute.  Sizzle hit the crossbar with the first shot but Browni was there to put home the rebound.

Browni Goal from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

Our next quality chance started with Lydia and Jazzy working the ball around the back until Lydia played a long ball through to Jordy for a beak away.  Unfortunately Jordy took too big of a touch on the break and Peawaukee's goalie was able to cut down her angle and make the save.

Ball Movement To Break Away from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

After a couple more half chances Kari almost put home our second goal.  A give and go between Jazzy and LK set up the break, but Kari shot over the bar to keep the score at 1-0.

Kari Chance from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

At this point in the game we were really starting to play well and we created a couple of nice chances through good build up play 

Build Up To Chances from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

but we still were not finishing our chances.  The score at half time was 1-0.  

At the break we stressed the importance of finishing off the chances we were creating.  The lack of finishing was the only issue that we were seeing.

Early on in the second half the girls finished off the second goal of the game.  Pina won the ball in our half and found Kayla in the midfield.  Kayla played the ball through for Jordy, with the help of a miss-touch by the defender, and this time she kept the ball close to her on the break and finished off her chance.

Jordy goal from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

What I liked most about the goal was after Jordy had gotten around the defender and was in on goal she could have crossed the ball to the middle where Sprout was making her run.  But instead of crossing to Sprout who was covered she continued to dribble and when no one stepped to her she took the shot herself.  Jordy made the defender choose to cover Sprout or go to her, and when the defender chose to cover Sprout she took her chance.

We were almost on the board again a little later with great build up play by Jazzy and Cooney.  I can't tell who the ball went to and who almost scored on the cross, but it was nice.

2nd Half Chance from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

The game was sealed with about 10 minutes left.  Jazzy found Blitz, who played Ricky on a good overlap run.  Ricky passed the ball to Erika and after a couple of moves she hit Kari who was wide open at the top of the box to finish off the goal.

Kari Goal from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

It was great for Kari to get a goal since she has been creating so many chances but has not scored in a very long time.  This goal will do wonders for her confidence when it comes to scoring.

Peawaukee did get on the board with about 6 minutes left after they won the ball from us in back and we were pushed too far forward too early.  The girls took the goal pretty hard and were very upset that they had been scored on.  It was nice to see that they are putting a lot of emphasis on not giving up goals.

Peawaukee Goal from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

The first day of games had gone really well.  Next up, we took the girls to the local put put place that had mini golf, rock climbing, and water balloon launchers.

Madison- Round 1

  The director at the tournament was able to accommodate some of my scheduling requests when it came to keeping all 3 teams playing at separate times.  This meant that Team Nike drew the short end of the stick and had the early game of the day and breakfast was scheduled for 6:45 in the morning.  I contemplated letting Cook take Team Nike all weekend when I saw the draw but I went with my better judgement and I was down at breakfast a little before 6:40.

I arrived down in the lobby and found a number of the girls already down there and they were bouncing off the walls.  One of the girls informed me that she had been up since 5:45 and was ready to go.  In my head I made the comparison of these early risers to little energizer bunnies.  Once they turn on they are impossible to stop.

Right at 6:45 the girls who actually enjoy sleeping past 6:00am walked in zombie like fashion into the lobby, rubbing their eyes and wondering how in the world some people could actually enjoy being up at this time.  Slowly the energy of the early risers would wake the sleep walkers up and by the end of breakfast we had to remind the girls to be quiet since most of the hotel was probably not awake yet.

Cook and I arrived at the fields an hour and twenty minutes before kick off and we zipped through check in without a hitch.  Whew.  One task down.  Now onto the Hi Pod.

The Hi Pod arrived at the field about 50 minutes before kick off.  Two of the parents and I then went about the task of putting the missile launcher together.  After 15 minutes we had the base set up and the extension part of the Hi Pod ready to go up.  Then we turned our attention to the camera itself and how the screen and the wires and all the other stuff went together.  I started to wish that we had gone through the trial run last night.

After another 15 minutes figuring out how all the wires fit in we had the camera hooked up and it was ready to go up, but from prior experience I said that we should turn it on and record something first to make sure that it was working.  The camera was hooked up and the feed was working but the only problem was that the video screen was showing everything backwards?!  So I started hitting every button I could on the video screen until it finally worked and with 5 minutes to spare before the game I was able to get over to the girls and give them the starting line up.  Thank goodness Cook was here to make sure they were going.

The first game was against TOSA.  

We had our first really good chance 3 minutes into the game when Kenzie (RF) combined with Bella and Gaffer to get around TOSA's defense and crossed the ball to Carly but her shot was right at the goalie.

1st Chance from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

We got on the board in the 9th minute that started with LP winning the ball to Bella who then put Gaffer through on a break away.  Unfortunately you can't see the finish but she dribbled the ball all the way inside the penalty area and hammered the ball into the upper corner to give us the lead.

Goal from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

Since the halves were only 25 minutes long I put in the subs at the half way point of the half.  At that time I subbed all 3 forwards along with one of the center mids.  Up until that point we had not been offsides once and we had created numerous chances.  After the subs went in we were offsides 9 times in the remaining 12 minutes of the half!  It was unbelievable.  The tough part was that in almost every offsides we were either standing still offsides or the forward who could see the entire field in front of her was offsides.  It was a major case of ball watching and not knowing what was going on around you.

In this case it took us 15 seconds to go from one offsides call to the next.

From One Offsides To Another from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

At half time we addressed the off sides issue and went over how the forwards should make their runs so they would not be caught offsides so many times.

The second half was better with the offsides but we failed to put any more goals that counted on the board.  I had to leave with 10 minutes left to get to the U12's game but Cook said we put in 2 more goals that were called offsides that actually weren't.  The video of the game ran out about when I had to leave so I couldn't validate this but I guess that our reputation from the first half preceded us.

The game ended up 1-0 in our favor.  

After a long run across the entire complex and over the road to the other complex I arrived at the U12 game and saw them win 4-1 and they played pretty well in that game.

Team Swoosh's first game was against Appleton and this was one of the games that I was hoping would be a decent match for us.  Appleton's team an age group up at U14 won State Cup last year and I had hoped that this would mean that their U13 team would also be a good team.  

Appleton was a very tall team and we were unable to create much in the first ten minutes as the girls continued to figure out how we wanted them to play.  9 minutes in when Kayla's cross was fumbled by the goalie who recovered to make a nice save.  Then off the ensuing corner kick Kayla's first time shot went right to the goalie.

Half Chance & Corner from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

That chance seemed to get us rolling and LK started showing off her footskills as the girls began to move the ball better and we started to win a lot of corners.

Lk's Moves Lead To Another Corner from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

We got on the board in the 24th minute when a good ball from Ricky (CD) to Kari set up Cooney on an overlap that led to another corner for us.  Ricky sent the corner into the box and Sizzle's first volley was blocked but it came right back to her and she buried the ball into the back of the net with a great volley.

1st Goal from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

 At half time we praised the girls for how many corner kicks that they had won and we talked about the need to finish on all of our chances.  Besides not finishing the chances, the girls were playing really well.

The second half started and Sprout displayed some good moves to almost set Jordy up on a break away and then she had some more moves to help us keep possession of the ball.  It was great to see the girls enjoying having the ball at their feet.

Sprout's Moves from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

Kari was also having a good time with the ball at her feet and she was able to win 6 corners in the game!  Here are some of them.

Kari Wins Corners from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

In the 37th minute we showed that the EPL isn't the only place that needs replays to tell if the ball goes out of bounds when Sprout hit the side of the goal but the ref never blew his whistle and Jordy must not have seen the ball go out so she played on.  It was probably a good thing that we didn't score from the chance.

Replay Please from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

In the 2nd half our defenders were really starting to do a great job of moving the ball around the field and it was fun to watch. 

Ball Movement From The Back from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

Lydia (CD) also had some great moves from the back to move the ball up the field.

Lydia Moves from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

We scored our second goal of the game just before the end when Kari won another corner and Sprout volleyed home the ball.

2nd Goal from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

It was a good game for Team Swoosh and a good start to the weekend for all the teams.