At tryouts, the girls who I thought would show well did.  I was hoping that there may be one or two girls who might come out of the woodwork, so to speak, at tryouts; girls who were out there and interested and who I hadn't known about.  But that didn't happen. 

After the tryout process was complete, I decided to go with thirteen girls on the roster; Bidi, Macky, Maddog, Em, Tash, Bruchu, Red, Lily, Millie, Blondie, Nasher, Shorty, and Soph.  Though I would have prefered twelve, thirteen still left room to add someone along the way or grab a talented guest player for an event.  The U11 WSA Magic was set and the team began a journey that I knew would likely last for three full years.

For the 2004 MYSA Fall Competitive season, we competed at the U11 Maroon (top) level.  The fall season is historically a less competitive season than the summer season mainly because most clubs do not hold tryouts until the late fall or following spring.  So top fall teams are usually formed by assignment rather than by evaluations and thus may not be made up of the truly best players at a club's age group.  I knew we'd be a strong group and we'd also have an advantage as most every girl on this team had played on the 8v8 field (with offisdes) for a year already.

I'm sure I could have played this team up to the U12 age group and we could have undoubtedly held our own.  However, I had a number of reasons for wanting to keep the girls at their true age group for this first fall season.  The main reason was that the Academy concept was new to most people.  I had a good idea of what the winter training would entail, and I wanted to make sure to put the girls in a good position to see success (results-wise) at the get go in order to have a solid foundation of confidence on which to build upon.  Some may argue with this rational, but it made sense to me.

Fall league games are played on the weekends as opposed to summer league games which are played on weekday evenings.  So our fall season consisted of two set training sessions per week and a game or two on the weekends.  I set two team practices per week and then had an optional finishing session for those who wanted to attend a third session.  We usually got 100% attendance for the optional session which I saw as a very good indication of the interest level of this group of girls.

League games were not very competitive.  We blew a couple teams out and that prompted me to really start to think about ways to not run up the scores but still continue to develop the girls (see Blowouts - Keep Better Players Playing).

Midway through the season we came up against a team from Hastings.  I remember it was a beautiful fall day at Bielenberg for that game.  The Magic had dominated every game up until this point and I think the girls were starting to feel very confident in their abilities.  The game began and about ten minutes into it, a big, strong, athletic Hastings girl in the center of their midfield dribbled through three of our players and ripped a ball past our GK.  That was the first goal that was scored on us that fall.

The Magic battled back and ended up scoring a number of goals, but the big Hastings midfielder scored on us again later in the game.  This girl, Sarah (it's important to catch names) had sparked my interest and I watched her closely for the rest of the game.  She obviously had athletic talent, but she also did some very clever things with the ball as well, demonstrating a keen soccer instinct to match her athleticism.  She was getting frustrated though as her passes to teammates usually ended up with them losing the ball, and when she got herself into dangerous positions and her teammates could not seem to find her with a pass.  Athletic, good soccer instinct and skill, frustrated with her teammates inabilities... ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!!!!  But seriously, this girl had potential and there was little doubt that our program would be more help to her than her current training/playing environment (if she was interested).

As luck would have it, after the game I just happened to be walking to the parking lot alongside Sarah and her parents.  Sarah had tears in her eyes and she was obviously upset about the game.  She's competitive, I thought, another plus in my book.

"Sarah, right?", I said,  "You have nothing to be upset about, you really played a great game."

A little shock on her face, and on her parents' faces, that I knew her name.  Who is this crazy guy?  I introduced myself as the Director of Coaching for the Woodbury Soccer Club and ex-professional player.  I told her that she was one of the best players I'd seen at this age group and that she has been the only girl to score on us all fall.  That got her smiling and I got the thank you smiles from her parents.  I told them that if Sarah wanted to get some additional training this winter, she was welcome to come up and train with my group.  Sarah's parents seemed interested in the idea, so I got their number and told them I'd be in touch.

Was this recruiting?  People will see it like they want to.  I say this was identifying a real talent and offering her a supplemental training opportunity to help her develop.  Did I think that once she got in our training environment that she might want to eventually make a move to our club?  Of course I did.  Do I think that I have a duty to the girls game in Minnesota to help identify and develop the higher level soccer athletes by making them aware of higher level playing opportunities?  Of course I do.  Identifying, recruiting, whatever.  We all live in our own worlds and see things through our own glasses.  I was doing her a favor (again, if she was interested in pursing an alternate development option) and I was doing myself and my girls a favor by potentially bringing in another top level player who would add tremendously to the level of our training sessions and thus help all the girls develop.

Moving on, we set up a tournament trip to Milwaukee to compete in the Pepsi Cup Tournament in mid-October.  The tournament was hosted by the Milwaukee Kickers, one of the largest soccer clubs in the US.  I had known about this club through my indoor professional playing days with the Milwaukee Wave (NPSL).  It was not a top-level event, but one where our new WSA teams would likely find competition and success. 

We took all our U11 and U12 Academy teams to the event in an effort to build an Academy-club feel.  The Inferno (now U13) also made the trip and even though I had passed the reigns on to Barkus, I coached the team at this event because he was busy with the University of MN Women that fall. 

Bruchu couldn't make the trip with us so I invited a guest player to help with numbers.  Hans, a U11 player currently playing up on he Bloomington Youth SC U12 team had an older sister who was guest playing with the Inferno for this event as well, so it was a convenient event for their family.  I knew Hans was a good player but really didn't know that much about her.  She fit in well, had a good time, did some good stuff on the field, and expressed interest in doing some additional events and training with us through the next year.

The Magic ended up doing very well in the event, eventually emerging after five games as Champions.

The rest of the fall went well for the Magic.  They trained hard, but didn't find too much competition in the league games.  The closest game came against Eden Prairie (2-1) mainly because we weren't very sharp that day and also because they had a dynamite little player on their left wing, Chilly, who tore us up.  The game against a very athletic Eagan team was relatively close as well, ending 2-0. 

We won the South District and advanced to the MYSA Fall Harvest Fest Tournament.  There, the girls continued to play well, meeting Eden Prairie again in the final.  We played much better against the EP girls this time and won the championship 2-0.  It was a nice finish to a great first season!