many handshakes and explanations of my present situation / A tie is a loss

Played my old school this Thursday. The varsity had tied and J-V beat this team over Spring Break when we had a 'friendly' game. But not this day. It was to be a loss and a tie. And for J-V, I blame myself. When we last played, we fairly dominated the game. We had two varsity players on the field @ most times, but we were the better team. I was certain that we had gotten so much better since then -of course we were going to win and win big. But we didn't, and I knew the reason - the coaches on the other side (my buddies) had done a better job. Thus over the time that elapsed between the two games the other school had improved more than my team. I have to become a much better practice coach.

And it was nice to see all the old crowd. Many handshakes and explanations of my present situation to many people, both adults and kids. So many; I so often miss being a part of that context. But time marches on, and I love my team here now. But it nice to see the coaches yelling and slouching on the sidelines.... them yelling @ the refs.... them talking to the kids..... Where they are now, I once was, and I'm such the helpless romantic (sometimes)....... it was fun to be back...

But the game. We should have won. We dominated. But the other team scored for the first fucking time this year - on a free kick -and thus matched our lone goal. We tied, where we should have won. I blame it on me. We need to practice gettin getting the ball to the outside, I now realise. But there was a 'good thing'.

And that good thing is?? That I realise. I have grown. It kills me that I have been tardy with this team - I should have been drilling these concepts into this team in practice all season so far . This present team, being the apple of my eye right now ((love this team big time they've really captured my mind )); it makes me feel stupid and dumb not to have been addressing these issues from the beginning of the season. But they will get it in practice Monday, as will my team next year and all years after. I'm allowing myself to grow on the job, so to speak.

So, what we need to do is move the ball more to the outside of the field - it'll open up space all over the field. Still, it sucks that this magnificant team is getting these ideas and practices so late in the season. Such good kids.