MA Youth Futsal Tournament

 

    Over the extra long weekend, I participated in a Massachusetts Youth Futsal tournament. In case you don't know, Futsal is indoor soccer, with a smaller court than outside, and you can't kick the ball off the walls. The ball is also a little bit smaller, and it doesn't really bounce.There were 2 tryouts that the team had to go to so that my coach could pick certain people. Since Futsal has a smaller court, there can only be 5 people on the court at once, including the goalie. So because of that, my coach picked 9 players to participate in this tournament. Out of the 9 players he picked, fortunately one of them was me!
       There were 2 games on Saturday, 1 game on Sunday, and 2 games on Monday. I was very proud of how we played on Saturday. The first game was at 8:00am, and we played Kings FC. For most of the game it was tied, and at almost the end it was 3-3, and then one of the girls on my team immediately scored twice, and then the other teams goalie was going far up because she wanted to try to steal the ball and get goals, but then my teams goalie threw it about 3 feet over the halfway line, and one of the forwards was there, and I forget if it bounced once or not, but the goalie was not at the net, so it was wide open, and one of my teammates just kicked it right in the net. The final score was 6-3 my team.
       The second game that day was against Cape Cod Futsal Club. The first half my teams goalie didn't get 1 shot on net, and we scored 10 goals. I scored 3 goals (hat trick technically) The first 2 were just simple on the ground shots in the corners, but the 3rd one was even better. One of my teamates (or me) shot the ball, and the goalie saved it and it was moving very fast about to go out of bounds, but I stopped it, pulled it back behind a defender, and then no one was in front of me, so I held onto the left post (to get my balance) and shot it fast and high to the left. In the second half, we switched our goalkeeper who had a couple of great saves, and my team continued to try to win the ball as much as we could. We got up to 16-0, and then my couch called a timeout, and he told us that we needed 5 passes before we could shoot unless we had a wide open net. And then, he switched it to
3 passes, and THEN he finally told us that we should just try to keep possession of the ball and pass it around. Everyone wanted to try to keep scoring, but we just passed it around. The final score of that game was 16-0 my team.
     And then on Sunday, the stakes were high because whoever won that game would be in 1st place In bracket A, and would have to play the 2nd place team in bracket B (there are 2 brackets for U10. A
and B.) We played a very aggressive and competitive team called DV Academy from Long Island,
New York. The game ended up in a tie 3-3. My GPS North National 06 girls team only plays together once or twice a month, and people think we have very good chemistry together even though we don't practice often. A lot of the teams we played (including DV Academy) practice together all the time. But since coming into the game on Sunday we were already 1st place, we stayed first place, and then on Monday played the second place team in bracket B, and DV played the first place team in bracket B.
     On Monday morning, we ended up playing the Bayside Bolts FC. I thought something that was critical that my team did that morning and afternoon was high pressure, and making good decisions. We made sure that we tried to take as many shots as we could. At first, we were shooting the ball a lot , but they were just a little off target. Soon though, we turned it around, and the final score was 4-1 my team. They scored in the last 10 seconds, and I take the blame because I got the ball and tried to kick it away because there were a lot of people around me, and the girl in front of me stopped the pass, and shot it up high and fast into the left corner, and the goalie had no chance of saving it. Everyone thought in their head after the game was over "We won the semifinals, now all we gotta do is win the finals, and it's all ours!" After our game was over, we went on the next court to watch DV Academy play Futnado FC, and they had tied, so they had to go into penalty kicks, and even as the number one team in bracket B, they still lost to DV. So, later on in the day, we had a rematch with DV Academy in the finals.
    The game started out scoreless, and then a girl on my team scored, and not soon after, I scored! I was on defense, and the ball got kicked away on the ground, and I one touch smashed the ball high into the middle of the net, and the goalie tried to jump, but it was to fast to stop. After my goal, we were up 2-0. Later, DV scored, and then at the last 10 minutes, me and another girl were talking on the bench about how much it would mean to win this. We kept saying 9:30 to go, 8:30 to go, 7:30 to go, and on and on, until about the last 3 minutes because I subbed in for left forward, and played the hardest I could. I distinctly remember the last 10 seconds of the game because we were on the verge of winning, and finally I heard the BIG LOUD buzzer and I ran over to the bench and I just hugged the other girl named Avery who scored the first goal so tight. Everyone was so happy and excited! My coach came over and told us to go to court 8 because that's where we got our medals and pictures taken. After that, we went into a room off to the side of the courts because one girls family on my team had brought cupcakes to celebrate, and we just had tons of fun, and took lots of pictures. EVERYONE ON THE TEAM WAS SO HAPPY WITH THE OUTCOME!!
    Throughout the  tournaments and the practices, we have really grown big friendships with one another, and we really bond together. At the start, no one really knew each other, and now, whenever you see us, we are Moses likely laughing. We earned the outcome we were looking for, and we played our hearts out his Futsal tournament. Oh yeah, I forgot, one last word: YESSSSSS!!!!!!!