Vegas Soccer with Gage (Pa1rt 2 of 2)

 

The final group stage game was against Pateodores Soccer Club 2010B White.  It was a lunch time game, so we first had a pretty late breakfast and brought some snacks.  We ended up taking care of business here and won 3-0.  Based on goal differential, we ended up winning our group with 6 points and moving on to play the next morning.

We decided to celebrate that evening and took the guys for an early night walk along the Strip.  These guys were psyched, but I think us chaperones were a bit nervous.  We had to keep them corralled with one of us up front and one in the back the make sure we didn't "lose" any along the way. 

Here is Gage as the night lights are just starting to come out...which also meant that it was about time for us to get these boys back to our hotel before the true Vegas nightlife starts to kick off in earnest.

I am not sure that we expected to be here or not, but the next morning we squared off against CDA Slammers 2010B White in the Semi-Finals.  It was a really hard fought and physical game, but we came out with another win 1-0!  However, this is where things kind of started to go south.  When the logistics were originally planned a few months out, we were assured that no games would be played Sunday afternoon.  As it turns out, the finals match that we were scheduled to be in against Empire Surf 2010B Academy was scheduled for 1:30 pm that afternoon.  With out flight being at 4:00 pm, it wasn't feasible to get the game in and still make the flights.  We tried to petition the tournament to move the game up a bit just so we could get it in, but that didn't work.  We let the CDA Slammers take our spot in the final and joked with them that if they won, we would be expecting the trophy in the mail!  They did actually end up winning, through penalties (4-2) after tying 1-1 in full time.  

It seems like we should have at least had a reasonable chance to win that game too, given the final outcome, but we were proud of the team's effort.  We did have some injuries mounting through the weekend that would have made it hard, and we lament to chance to celebrate hoisting a trophy up, but what a great weekend of soccer!  Lots to be super proud of.