Soccer JV/Varsity

 

Today also turned out to be an interesting soccer day.  The first fun part was getting to play at Boulder High School (my alma mater) and the second was Gage once again got called up to play with the JV team.  At least with JV and above, you get to play on nice fields.  This is a beautiful field in the middle of Boulder at Boulder High School.

JV team ended up losing a close game 3-1, but both Gage and Gavin played well.  Here is Gavin after the game talking to some of the lady team managers.

After the JV game, Gage was asked to stay as a backup for the Varsity game as well due to an injury of the backup keeper.  This was definitely a first for him, but he jumped right in... despite having almost never practicing or playing with the team.  What's funny is that he's still the tallest person out there even just being a freshman.  This is the team circle up before the game.

Gage has also never done the lineup before and didn't know where to go so he actually lined up at the wrong side (over on the right) and we got a good chuckle out of it when we talked to him later.  He was supposed to be lined up next to the starting keeper (Noah) who is in the teal goalie kit.

Welp, this game went downhill pretty quick.  Boulder was absolutely stacked this year and was led by a D1 Clemson commit up top as a forward.  They looked better than us at almost every position on the field, though.  They scored a couple quick goals on Noah early in the first half and then just kept on pounding away.  By the end of the first half Legacy was down something like 0-6.  I've almost never seen anything like it.  The second half started just as bad and after one more goal against us, we saw some quick commotion on the bench that made my stomach drop.  They started to warm up Gage...but there was like 35 minutes left in the game.  I was thinking to myself, "Are they really going to put him in to get shelled in this blood bath?"  Apparently, they were.  A few more minutes later and Gage was taking over for the final 30 minutes of the game.  Here he is, a young 14-year-old playing against full grown men with some of them being 18+ in a game they are already down 0-7.  I guess that's the way it goes.  I was so nervous for him, and you could tell he was a bit intimidated as well.

I am so proud of him, though!  Here he is coming out through a ball and a defender on a 1v1 with one of the Boulder strikers.  He made a big early save here to get some confidence.  They did get two goals on him, though. But that was quite a good outcome considering the rest of the game.  He had one that got through on a corner kick from a back post shot that he couldn't really do much about.  The second was kind of a weird one where the referee said a redirection back to him was actually a "pass back" that he picked up so they awarded a free kick right outside the box.  He made an initial save on the free kick, but they got a rebound shot that went in.  All in all, it was pretty crazy to watch, and he stepped up big time.  Tough night, though, as the team lost 0-9.  Awesome individual job by Gage, though!