Legacy Soccer Banquet

It's a bit hard to find Gavin in this picture, but if you look in the second row behind Alex Schiavone you can see him peeking out.  This is the JV team picture at his second awards banquet for Legacy High School Soccer.  It's crazy to see these guys grow up year over year, but we are proud of Gavin for making JV and being a big contributor to the team this year.

Top Golf Reunion

I am not sure what actually instigated this impromptu AGO reunion, but it was probably Jon Meyers' doing.  In any case, we had a great night with old friends (husbands & wives) hitting some golf balls in the cold weather over at Top Golf.  I don't think any of us are actually golfers but the stories carried us through.  What a great idea and hopefully we can keep getting together with old friends like this more often!

Colorado Edge - North Carolina Soccer Tournament

The Jefferson Cup is the second big tournament that Gage's team is competing in this year and the team was ready to have some fun.  This is a huge tournament on the East Coast and was mostly held in and around Richmond, VA.  We were placed somewhere in the middle of the "flights" or "brackets" of competition and should mostly be matched up against ECNL RL teams.  I was able to be a chaperon for the trip, which meant lots of driving duty but also lots of game watching.  On the first night of the hotel stay, we went over rules and then we did some team building work with two trains passing a soccer ball over their heads up and down the line.  

Gage and Astik split game duties and Gage took the first game.  The weather was a bit all over the place with some chilly days and light rain sprinkled throughout the tournament.  Thankfully, we only had to repeat the 45 minute drive back to the hotel once because the kids forgot the team soccer balls/pennies at their hotel!

Here is the team after their first game.  They ended up playing well but split their first two games meaning that they wouldn't move on.

The last day that we were there finally gifted us with some good sun shine and a good victory over our last opponent.  This was late in the season for our team, but we were thankful to get in some good work to take back to Colorado for the start of Spring Season.  

Real Colorado - MLS Next+ Games

Gage continues to split a bit of time with his club and training with Real Colorado as a guest player on their Academy MLS Next+ team.  Here he is in warmups before the game.

In these games there isn't always an expectation to play, but in this game they threw him in right away in the second half.  I am not sure I have been more nervous to watch him play than I was for this game as it was only a 2-1 game at the time.

After a bit of nervousness, he did great and seemed to come into his own on the field.  I think they ended up winning 3-2.  He was looking pretty good in the yellow kit that Real Colorado uses.  I know Gage is still getting to know some of the guys at Real, but this is a pretty special experience for him.

Gage's Braces

Gage finally broke free from his braces!  He was so close for so many months, and they kept saying just one more month, just one more month.  But he finally made it!  I love these signs they have for the guys when they get their braces off, "Peace Out Braces".  Braces are quite a journey and a pain with all the appointments, but I am thankful that both of our guys have really nice smiles now.  Hopefully they can continue to wear their retainers at night to keep them looking this way.