The Soccer Tournament

Last weekend Lexi, aka #21, had her end of season soccer tournament in Ohio. Mom made the trek from Arizona to join us and we headed out! Nate has taken Lex to most of the games all season because they are always on Saturdays so him and Liv stayed home on dog duty.

The normal 2 hour drive turned out to be a little longer because me and the GPS were having communication issues! ONE of my detours (there may have been 3) was through a lovely, picturesque little town.

Her team has been playing in the "premier" league all season, which is an older (more advanced skills) age group, these teams are practicing 2-3 times more each week then our team. Lexi's team probably won only half of their games all season, so going into the tournament I wasn't expecting them to do very well. Their coach had them play in the harder league all season and then entered them in this tournament which was against teams of their same age level.

There were eight teams split up into two groups, the winner of each group would play for the championship. They played two of their games Saturday and won! Lexi had one goal, a couple of attempts, one of which she got tackled so she got a goal kick... but since she had already scored a goal the coach let one of the other girls kick it. She had two other "goals" that they called off sides on... I only believe she was off sides on one, because she was dribbling the ball down herself on one of them (nobody passed the ball to her) so it would have been impossible for her to be off sides.... so she was robbed! Afterwards we went and checked into our hotel and had dinner with a some of girls from her team and their moms.

Sunday morning they played the last team in their group annihilating them so it was off to the championship game that afternoon for Erie United!!!

The team they were playing against did the same thing as them this season, playing in the harder league and dropping down into their own age group for the tournament, we played them a couple of weeks ago winning them with ease. I think the girls really underestimated them because the first half of the championship game the girls seemed to be more interested in watching the game then playing the game and the other team was able to score one goal. The second half of the game the girls came out and played hard, they kept the ball on their half of the field the entire time.... had a dozen goal attempts... two goals that the refs called off sides on.... one bloody nose... one bloody lip... but in the end zero goals... it just didn't go their way with the final score 0-1. Erie United came in second place.... pretty dang good, and a lot of fun to watch!

What a week for my cute sporty girl, way to go Lex! Arriving home on Sunday, Nate had a wonderful dinner prepared for us and afterwards we relaxed and played a couple of games of Apples to Apples... of which mother couldn't catch a break! What a fun weekend!