As the 2005 summer season came to a close I was again in a quandary of what to do with this talented group of girls.  There was no more point in even considering playing them and their true U12 age group for MYSA league.  The girls now needed to be challenged in competitive game situations as much as possible in order to allow me to best be able to help them develop.  See Find Challenge, Find Success and Keys To Accelerated Player Development

So in an move that I thought would have many benefits to the girls and to our Academy program as a whole, I registered the girls to compete in the Boys U12 Classic 1 (top level) League for the 2005 Fall MYSA season.

To say that this ruffled some feathers would be a severe understatement.  The people pissed off were, as you can imagine, coaches and parents from opposing teams.  I think I could have minimized this negativity this by simply notifying opposing East District boys team coaches early on that they would be facing a girls team, but I didn't want to show my hand early in fear that these coaches would band together and organize something that would stop the girls from participating in their league.  I had talked with officials at MYSA in late July and early August (prior to registering the team in the boys league) and, after some digging, the powers that be at MYSA assured me that it was perfectly within the rules to have the girls compete in the boys league.  However, I still didn't want to chance it that an outcry from the masses might affect the girls placement in this league, so many of the boys teams early on were caught by surprise as they showed up at their assigned field for a game against BTE (the three letter code for our club representing Bangu Tsunami East) only to see a bunch of pony-tails running around warming up on the other side of the pitch. 

I needed to manage the parent group as well during this decision process as many of them thought that I might be opening the girls up to injury against the boys.  But I've had enough experience at this age group to know that the girls would, in general, be bigger and stronger than many boys at this age, and the increased risk of injury was in my mind was a non-factor.

I knew that in general, the boys would be quicker and more athletic overall than my girls.  I thought that we would be able to counter some of this quickness with our own team's overall size, speed, and strength relative to similar aged boys.  After a year of almost zero competition in league play, I wanted to be able to use more official games as barometers of where the girls were at, as well as to better highlight individual and team strengths and weaknesses.  Up until this point, I had only been able to do this at regional events. 

My long term vision was to have these girls play up a year to the U13 girls C1 (top level) age group the following summer.  We could have played U13 C1 this fall, but I really wanted to see if these girls could hang with the boys.  I also thought that the novelty of this idea would help turn some heads toward our program, eventually continuing to help attract talent to the Academy. 

In the end, this turned out to be one of the best decisions for this group.  The games against the boys were for the most part competitive, seeing us completely dominate only one team and never outclassed except against the St Croix boys. 

We ended up taking second in the East District and advancing onto the Fall Harvest Fest Tournament in late October.  There, we beat Eagan and Eden Prairie's top boys teams to advance to the State Championship against St Croix (the team from our East District).  This St Croix team was one of the top two U12 boys teams in the State.  They came up against the other top team, Minneapolis United, in the other semifinal and squeaked by 1-0.  St Croix had handled us easily in our first meeting that fall, beating us 3-0 in a game that was not that close.  The Harvest Fest final was a different game, and although we came up short 1-0, we played much better and had a goal disallowed for a dubious offsides call (aren't they all!). 

What was so great at that Harvest Fest Championship game was the support that the girls received from other girls teams (girls teams who were participating in the Harvest Fest and who had games around our field or who were just passing by on their way to a game or back to their cars) who saw us playing the boys.  The comments that random girls and their parents would shout in support of the Bangu girls was really neat to see.  It was definitely a packed sidelines as many people not affiliated with each team or club came to watch the final game and see the girls vs the boys. 

The girls performance was truly inspiring this entire season, and one that I will never forget.

Oh, though I wasn't in attendance for the game (at a tournament in Rockford with one of the other Academy teams), it was selfishly fun to hear that we beat Woodbury's team in league play.  The team was coached by the then club President of Woodbury Soccer, the man who had done everything in his power to stop our Academy program from taking root in the area.  I heard he didn't even shake our girls' hands at the end of the game.  Pure class...