Category: sport

Toby has started doing Gym Club on a Wednesday instead of his Thursday afternoon soccer club. When I first heard about this I had a mental picture of Toby lifting weights and that seemed a little odd. As it turns out, Gym Club is gymnastics rather than weight training. This made more sense. This week he has learnt how to do forward rolls and very good he is too! Don’t believe me? Check this out:

httpv://youtu.be/tBPTs2ZlqCI

In the build up to her birthday, Tracy had been getting grumpy! She was not happy that there appeared to be a distinct lack of presents which wasn’t helped by me telling her I hadn’t got her anything – which to be fair I hadn’t! Anyway, a quick trip to Walmart and the purchase of a lovely red frying pan soon rectified that! How lucky can one girl be!?

After a day of relaxing the birthday culminated in the ultimate birthday present – a Mariners baseball game! And if that wasn’t enough, it was also the Ichiro bobble head night! Yet another fabulous birthday present!! So with a slap birthday meal of fish and chips, washed down with a couple of pints, the only thing left was her Fanboard Fanagram message! What a day!

How on earth are we going to top this birthday!? At least we have just under a year to plan it!!

The slideshow with more pics is here.

The final game of the season. The first 7 had all been won but the league title was still not secure. If they lost to Tynecastle – today’s opposition – then there was a chance that they could still lose the title on goal difference. The afternoon didn’t get off to a good start – we were missing a coach! With about 15 minutes left before kick-off we grabbed a coach from an under 10 team and asked him to help out! Fortunately he didn’t have any other games to go to so he did.

The game kicked off and was a bit tense to be honest! As the coach hadn’t trained them before the players were in all sorts of different positions and it made for a nervous afternoon! However, an hour later the game was won. Just! Gunners won 3-2 – with Harry Stickman providing the assist for the winning goal – and they finished top of the table with a 100% winning record. The game was so tense that I forgot to take any pictures or video! Apart from this one of the team at the end:

Possibly not the greatest photographic tribute so maybe this one is better:

httpv://youtu.be/04854XqcfCY

And for the record, Harry’s team mates for his first American league season are as follows:

Marcos Acero-Blyshak
Benjamin Bonnofsky
Benjamin Burns
Daniel Buxton
Brian Guo
Niclas Isensee
George Lan
Finlay Linehan
Daniel Salgado, and
David Walker

And the results were:

v Tynecastle won 5-1
v Crossfire Premier Shull won 4-0
v Crossfire Premier Korn won 5-0
v Washington Premier FC won 7-1
v Pumas UNAM won 4-0
v Crossfire Premier Mercado won 4-0
v Crossfire Premier Shull won 7-2
v Tynecastle won 3-2

Go Gunners!!

 

This friday was the final week of soccer for Toby and his team of Coyotes. Friday morning had been lovely – a crisp autumnal morning with some lovely sunshine. Come the afternoon however all had changed, it was raining. In fact it wasn’t just raining, the heavens had well and truly opened. And what’s more they stayed open! It was hideous!

At just after 4pm we left home (I was working from home) and drove up to Issaquah Highlands, parked the car and walked over to the pitches. By the time we found the Coyotes pitch we were all completely soaked, including Harry and Tracy who had come to watch the superstar that is Toby.

This week, the Coyotes final match was against the Eagles. The Eagles only had two players which meant we could either, go home, thrash them, or give them a player. I asked the Coyotes if anyone wanted to join the Eagles and Toby volunteered. So not only was it pouring with rain, Coyotes had 2 players who clearly didn’t want to be there (Ian and Alex), one who had so many layers on he could barely move (Mark), one who hadn’t turned up (Kadan), the talented french boy who wouldn’t take his red mac off (Enguerrand) and the best player who had joined the Eagles for this game (Toby). It didn’t bode well.

As expected the Coyotes took a bit of a beating! I think the final score may have been a 7-1. So in their final week the Coyotes lost their first game. The good news is that Toby played for the Eagles and scored a hat-trick for his new team. And without wishing to highlight that Toby is a superstar, the only time the Coyotes scored was when he was off the pitch having his shoe lace tied!

At the end of the game Toby rejoined his Coyote team mates and collected his first football trophy as reward for his efforts over the previous eight weeks. So despite the cold, wind and rain the afternoon had a happy ending with a hat-trick and a trophy:

A Sounders update without a video of Soundwave!? Whoever would have thought it? Trouble was I’d forgotten to charge the camera battery so video footage was at a premium and I didn’t want to miss out on any potential celebration filming. Oh the stress of it. I don’t know how I coped!

Anyway, leaving those stresses to one side, it was the day of the cup final and Grandad had arrived the evening before. If he followed the Sally approach to overcoming jetlag the ticket we bought for him would have been a waste of money, however, either the magic of travelling first class or the Tuesday afternoon nap meant that Grandad was bright eyed and bushy tailed (sort of) come 5pm on Tuesday and ready to go to the game!

A pretty high attendance for the game was being forecast (they had opened the Hawks Nest) so we left in good time. Traffic wasn’t too bad – a few queues over the floating bridge but then, as always, the traffic just disappears as we appear out of the second tunnel.

We parked the car and went into the stadium. Much to Harry and Toby’s delight we were given free Seattle Sounders ponchos in case it was raining. They’d been asking if we could get a poncho all the way over in the car so to be given some for free was a right result! After introducing Grandad to the Soundwave we filled our tums with burgers, hot-dogs and pizza and took our seats ready for the 7pm kick-off. They don’t take a lot of notice of start times for sport in the US. The cup final kicked off at 7:15pm after all the national anthems, fireworks and such had been completed.

The game started well, and in particular for the Sounders. After a while though it developed the feeling of being one of those games. Sounders had chance after chance but could not score. I was convinced Chicago Fire were going to go up the other end and score but for once the sporting gods were shining on a Seattle team. Two late goals gave Sounders the cup one of which was just about captured on camera:

httpv://youtu.be/wS5hWCN33dI

This goal was swiftly followed by the celebrations:

httpv://youtu.be/BBkzqOFXy3A

[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157627821857288″]

So a great night was had by all. Sounders won the cup, Grandad stayed awake and the boys got free Sounders ponchos. Who could ask for more!?

Despite all the tantrums across the past week Harry was eventually allowed to go to the Gunners match on Sunday. It was a 9am kick-off so that meant an early start. As always, whenever an early start is required the children were fast asleep and had to be woken. Why they didn’t do that the morning before I don’t know!

Anyway, we arrived at Starfire at 8:30am and got ourselves comfortable ready for the big kick-off. This week the Gunners were up against another Crossfire team having despatched another a week earlier. Despite not having a referee the game kicked-off and quite clearly the referee wasn’t the only one still asleep as the Gunners were a bit sluggish. After the shout went up from the crowd of “wake up Gunners” they sparked into life and almost scored with this goal mouth scramble:

httpv://youtu.be/jcH4p0qYcTU

The pressure told in the end though with Ben scoring one goal and then Harry going close:

httpv://youtu.be/e1Fdu-1c2a0

It wasn’t much longer until Gunners got their second and a lovely goal it was too from #34:

httpv://youtu.be/hg2XG1UFuPA

With the score 2-0 at half-time, we hoped for a reasonably stress free second half. It still wasn’t stress free enough for Tracy who had to leave at the start of the second half and go for a walk! She needn’t have worried though, three more goals for the Gunners followed, including another for the Stickman, and the final score was 5-0. The Gunners stay top for another week at least and it was a good finale for their coach who is heading back to the UK. They have a new Brazilian coach now so hopefully there will be lots of samba football to come!

Go Gunners!

A busy footballing weekend began on Friday afternoon with the start of Toby’s eight weeks of training. He’d been chomping at the bit since he’d scored 22 goals for Argentina in the World Cup final earlier in the summer! His team details had come through earlier in the week and he’d been put in the Coyote Team – or Boyotes as he called them initially!

Not only was it time for Toby to start training, it was also time for me to start helping out! Despite protestations all week I’d managed to find myself volunteered as a coach – so that’s my next 8 Friday afternoons sorted – let’s hope I don’t get any Friday afternoon meetings!

I left work early and took Toby up to the fields up on Issaquah Heights – which is up nears Zeeks Pizza in Issaquah. It was an absolutely scorching afternoon – the start of September has set new records this year as it is the first time that there have been 8 days over 80 degrees and we’re only 11 days in!

When we arrived we went over to pitch 16 and I had lots of parents asking me if I was “Coach Stickells” which felt very American and very odd! Unfortunately I was coach Stickells and I pretended to know what I was doing! Anyway, after a quick kick about, we went over to the group of main coaches to learn the skills that we had to teach the team. The exercise was called “sharks and minnows” and it was designed to teach them how to dribble and tackle. I had the pleasure of coaching Toby who, despite being a year younger than the other boys on team, was definitely one of the best (the second best actually). I’m not biased – he is just very good for his age. Plus the American boys weren’t! One picked the ball up every time it went near him, another appeared to be completely deaf or just confused by my accent! The only one better than Toby was the French boy. So the Coyotes had two good players out of six – an English and French boy!

After the exercises it was onto a game. The Coyotes had been given a blue shirt to wear throughout the training sessions which was a relief as there was a team running around in bright pink shirts – I think Toby may have quit if he’d had to have worn that! It was a 3-a-side game which lasted for about 20 minutes. Toby played very well and scored his first goal which he was very pleased about, although I think he enjoyed making some crunching tackles even more. The game was against the Dragons and it finished a 3-3 draw. All in all a pretty good start and Toby enjoyed himself so thats the main thing!

Apart from watching it on the TV, Saturday was a soccer free day. Sunday wasn’t though. Sunday was the opening day of the season for the Issaquah Gunners. Kick-off was at 2pm and the match was being played at Starfire Sports Complex which is the official training ground of  the Seattle Sounders – this made the occasion even more exciting for Harry. And me!

We arrived at 1:15pm, got our car park season ticket and settled down on the astro-turf ready for the opening game. The Gunners were playing against Tynecastle FC who they had played a few weeks back in a tournament (when Harry was in Hawaii) and they lost 2-0. Not to worry though – the Gunners are a finely tuned footballing machine with the confidence of a Cup victory behind them. It was a 9 a side game – which is the largest game that Harry has played in. His good performances in the Bainbridge Island Cup had obviously caught the eye as he was now a starter in the game.

Despite being American, the Issaquah Gunners are a very good soccer team, I think they would give the Harrold & Carlton Tigers a good thrashing! The game was tough and the Gunners goalie had a storming first half to stop what looked like 3 certain goals! At the other end, the Gunners were clinical and scored a couple of good goals through Marcos and Ben, to lead 2-0 at half time. In the second half it got even better with the Gunners scoring 3 more and not really looking too troubled at the back. Harry, who looked dead on his feet at the end, managed to score the 5th goal of the game. He came off just before the end and had a good drink to keep hydrated – there was no puking this time!

So, it finished 5-1 and the Gunners not only avenged the defeat from earlier in the season – they also went top of the league. Hopefully they will stay there but either way it was a very successful soccer filled weekend! Apart from the Sounders lost…

[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157627650984458″]

Harry had been promised a prize if he won the Bainbridge Island Cup. As soon as presents are on offer Harry seems to find super human powers! The Monday after the tournament Tracy took the boys to Toys R Us to buy some scissors for Toby to practice his cutting with (apparently this could form part of his test to get into school early). Harry managed to hijack the visit though and claim his prize. Not sure what to say really!

Harry and his soccer. It’s proving an expensive combination. First there were the coaching fees for the year – it’s not like playing for Harrold – fifty quid and you’re sorted! Follow that up with the kit purchases (which do look very nice to be fair) but Nike doesn’t come cheap. Once the new pair of boots were sorted we thought we could sit back and enjoy and watch our investment perform without any further raids of the piggy bank. Silly us!

This weekend was Harry’s first tournament with the Issaquah Gunners. They were taking part in the Bainbridge Island Cup which is a 30 minute ferry ride from Seattle. We hadn’t been there before so it seemed like it would be fun. Then the fixtures were published. A minimum of three games – two on Saturday and one on Sunday. Saturday kicked off at 10am and Sunday 9:30am. Working backwards from the kick-off time, to the ferry time, to the ferry wait time, the leave home time and the time to get up we concluded that we would need to set the alarm both mornings for about 6am at the latest. Bainbridge Island had lost some of its appeal. Frantic emails and calls to hotels and B&B’s across the island left us fearing the worst and cursing soccer! Everywhere was fully booked.

Eventually, despite their website saying otherwise, a call to Best Western found us a room. The last in the hotel! So on a beautiful sunny, Friday afternoon we set off to Seattle to catch the ferry. For those of you wondering, I was working from home, the car, the ferry and a nice little restaurant in Winslow!

We were hoping to catch the 2:10 ferry but as luck would have it we managed to squeeze onto the 1:10 with a few cars to spare. This was just the start of a lucky weekend! As we pulled away from the Pier the views of Seattle were beautiful. Then as we walked along the length of the ferry to see what Bainbridge Island looked like we had our second stroke of luck. A sighting of Orcas! A pod of twenty had been reported on the local news that morning and although we only saw a couple it was pretty blooming exciting nontheless! I managed to get a couple of pictures but an amazing whale photo has now jumped to #1 on my must do list!

Our hotel was in Winslow, which is the town right by the ferry dock. As usual we were all absolutely starving so we went straight to a lovely little restaurant and had beautiful sandwiches, wine, fries and beer! The island of Bainbridge was starting to go up in our estimations! After checking out a few shops we then went to the hotel and checked in. Next stop was the beach. We were on an island so they couldn’t be that hard to find, or so we thought. After completing a tour of most of the Island we did finally manage to find a beach for the boys to play on. They managed to amuse themselves for some time with a lump of driftwood and some seaweed. You’ll also see how well they did with the instruction of “don’t get your shorts wet”:

httpv://youtu.be/4-OarSFibGs

httpv://youtu.be/BH1kmpABaM4

httpv://youtu.be/8RcVUPUc2b8

After drying them off as best we could we went back to the hotel and threw them in the bath. By now we were of course starving and it was time for some dinner. It was actually far too late for dinner considering Harry had an important football match early the next morning. Anyway stomachs ruled and we went for a short walk and a bite to eat down near the harbor. We then retired to bed and fell fast asleep in readiness for the day ahead.

Despite the late night, Harry was awake at 6:30am and in his usual quiet way, woke the rest of us up. After breakfast in the hotel we took the very short drive up the road to Bainbridge High School where the games were taking place today.

First up was a game at 10am against Cascades FC. I think it came as a bit of a shock to Harry but unlike with Harrold & Carlton Tigers he wasn’t starting the match. He was going to have to make an impression from the substitutes bench. He got his chance half way through the first half but was playing left side of defence which is far from ideal for our goal scoring super hero. Plus it meant running around a lot rather than just standing about letting everyone else do the work!

In the second half he came on as sub again but on the right side of midfield and then we saw an improvement. Despite this improvement the ball was not going to go in for the Gunners. They could have played all day and not scored. Fortunately they only had to play for 50 minutes without scoring. Unfortunately Cascades FC scored 4. One game, one defeat. The next match wasn’t until 4:15pm so it was off for a team lunch at the local Mexican restaurant.

Gatherings like these make you realize how well behaved Harry and Toby are. The rest were monsters! Well, some of them – not all! With lunch out the way and a couple of hours to go until the game, Harry and Toby got the pleasure of some more shopping in Winslow – which is a bit like Langley on Whidbey Island.

We went back to the fields for the second game and positioned our Tommy Bahama chairs on the halfway line. Tracy had found two pennies in the car park which we hoped meant we’d get luck for the rest of the day. It was a must win game against Crush FC. Their name sounded impressive however it turned out they were no match for the Gunners and the lucky penny. After hitting the crossbar a couple of times Harry finally managed to score his first goal for the club and they ran out 12 – 1 winners. Toby spent the afternoon with his new friend, Jake. They played football, on the DS, chase, and occasionally watched their brothers play football.

After a refreshing shower – it had been a very, very hot day – we went to the Island Grill and had a unusual set of meals, ranging from Singapore noodles, to nachos, to cheese sticks, pepperoni pizza and pot stickers. All fed, it was back to the hotel for another good sleep ahead of what we hoped would be three more games on Sunday.

After breakfast in the hotel we were back to the pitches for a 9:30 kick-off against the Crush FC A team (yesterday had been against the B team). A win was required to be sure of a place in the semi-finals and a win was duly delivered! The final score was 7-1 and Harry Stickman scored a lovely goal to help the team on his way.

After returning to the hotel to check out and to Safeway to get a light bite to eat ahead of next game we returned to the field and found another penny in the car park! These weren’t planted by superstitious parents just in case you’re wondering! Because of the penny, we had high hopes for the game against Harbor Barracudas – another scary sounding team. I was confident ahead of the game that the Gunners would win however as the team had shot after shot after shot I was starting to get a little bit worried! However, as we neared the mid point of the second half Harry scored a belter of a shot to give the Gunners the lead (with his left foot – just for the record). Controversy soon followed with an equalizer for the Barracudas and the prospect of penalties loomed large. Never fear though – the Stickman had been promised a present if they won the cup and he wasn’t going to let any team get in his way! With time running out, he conjured up another great strike and the Gunners were heading to the final with a 2-1 victory.

And so the team of exhausted boys went to Battle Point Park which was at the north of the island. We drove their with Harry’s sweaty socks flapping out the car window as we tried to dry them! It wasn’t pleasant but it worked – they were dry by the time we got there.

While the team sat in the shade waiting for the final to kick-off Toby played football with the coaches. He kept the crowd entertained by saving the coaches shots and tackling them. The final was against Cascades FC – the team that had beaten them 4-0 the day before. I wasn’t overly confident but the Gunners were superb! Harry scored another two goals (as his coach had apparently asked him too) and they won the cup 5-2. As nice as it was to win the cup for all the obvious reasons, it was extra special because the Cascade supporters had been very confident, very vocally before the game about winning. So in the words of Toby when he saw some Cascade players later in the queue for the ferry, “take that suckers!”. Such a classy 4 year old!

After collecting his medal and having team pictures with the trophy Harry announced he felt sick. Despite being told to keep out the sun, wear his hat and drink lots he clearly hadn’t, and so he celebrated his first ever tournament win by being sick in the car park and in a plastic bag as we drove to the ferry. Two classy boys!

By the time we reached the ferry, Harry felt better and started to enjoy his success with his brother:

httpv://youtu.be/ceo3XEzB5vg

On the ferry the boys sat together and spent the 30 minute journey eating popcorn, cookies, crisps and gummy bears! I don’t know where they got all their energy from. The parents had been exhausted just watching their efforts all weekend, never mind running around in the sun for hours!

And so that was our weekend on Bainbridge. It’s a lovely island, the weather was amazing, the football was a bit stressful (particularly for Tracy) but overall our luck held. We saw orcas, won the cup and caught our ferries on time. A last minute hashed together plan came together perfectly! Let’s hope his season gets a bit cheaper though!

[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157627555230950″]

Another soccer posting I’m afraid. But this time instead of sound wave band videos we have match of the day like soccer videos featuring Harry and Toby playing on the final day of their soccer camp in a World Cup tournament.

All week we have been regaled with stories about how amazing they both are at soccer and how the only reason their teams have won is because of them. On Monday Toby came home green because he’d played in the rain in trainers and spent most of the morning rolling around in the grass. Monday evening required a trip to Authority Sports to buy them both a pair of Messi boots. And for the rest of the week the soccer performance stories grew to Messi-like proportions! Harry was scoring 8 goals every day and Toby’s team would be losing 10-0 until Toby scored 18 goals and they won 18-10. As the stories from Toby got ever more far fetched we began to question his interpretation of events but we should have known better than to doubt him!

On Friday we watched Harry and Toby playing and we started to believe the match descriptions that we had heard. Toby was no longer the little boy who was scared on his one appearance at Rugrats. Oh no. He was transformed into a footballing demon! He charged around the pitch, tackling people, scoring goals for fun, falling over, getting up again, shouting pass and doing little hops and skips as he celebrated scoring goals.

He played in his world cup final (representing Argentina) against England. Clearly the footballing heroics we had heard about all week were true as it was Toby and “his friend” (he didn’t find out his friends name) versus four other “England” boys and it was a mightily impressive display from Argentina:

httpv://youtu.be/eeg3JQX3KhM

And if that isn’t enough, here’s some more:

httpv://youtu.be/ydOQQOkTmF0

I’ve no idea what the final score was but Toby assured us he’d scored 22 and I think I probably believe him! Toby’s coach told us that they had never seen such a good player at that age group and more importantly he was also the best behaved boy they’ve ever had at that age group! Some things really are hard to believe!

Harry had performed equally as impressively all week, playing in the teams a year above him and today his rich vein of form continued. Harry and his team were representing Spain in their World Cup and in their first game they played England. Spain won 7-0 and Harry bagged 4. England were clearly a sorry mess of a team at all age groups! Then they moved on to play Belgium. With just a couple of minutes left Spain were losing 2-0 but then the Stickman arrived and scored twice to earn a draw. In the final game of the World Cup Spain were playing Brazil and another marvelous performance saw Spain win 6-0 with Harry scoring 5 of them. Deadly Stickells showed no mercy:

httpv://youtu.be/OBi4YYTaIWo

However, despite these performances Spain were some how runners up in the World Cup, 1 goal behind Belgium. Never mind. It’s only a game and all that rubbish!

At the end they collected their certificates and went home all hot and sweaty!

httpv://youtu.be/hSuiLpSN9Do

The rest of the afternoon was spent with Toby gloating about how much he’d won at football and Harry not wanting to talk about it – until he was reminded that his two trophies were arriving on Sunday with Sally. That perked him up a bit!