Special Needs Soccer, No difference

In my spare time, I coach a special needs soccer team. We play in the fall and generally get the same kids year after year. I've come to love them all, for all their faults and abilities.

We have the teams split up pretty evenly and we just play each other every week. We have one boy, I'll call him Adam, who is still only 12 or 13, but already taller than me, fast as a whip and has a pretty good idea what is going on. He tends to kick the ball too hard and not always where he should. But is easily the best player on either team. So we tend to load up the other team that doesn't have Adam, and working together, they really give him a run for his money. And all of them learn not to be intimidated by taller players.

When we do go on the road, about half the kids from each team can go, so we form 1 team and the Road Warriors hit the convoy of cars. This year we decided to enter in the Mesquite Halloween tournament they have every year. They have been begging us to come for some time, but they always wanted to have us spread out over 3 days, ridiculous for special needs kids.
This year they promised us, only 2 games on Saturday. So we agreed. About 4 days before the tournament, we get the schedule and they have us for 3 games, all on Saturday. I'm extremely worried about the kids getting tired and losing interest.
But we decide to persevere anyway.

We get there Saturday morning and find out we are playing on a little kids field. I mean this thing is 50-60 yards long and only 25-30 wide. Small goals, it is kind of ridiculous. I shake my head.

Game 1 at 10AM, is against a short handed team and they cannot nearly stand up to our speed and aggressiveness. So we ended up giving them one of our best players, who plays goalie for them the whole game, and 2 older siblings play. Between the 3 of them, they were the best players on their team. It took us till the 2nd half to score. And then right afterwards, they kick towards our goal, my son Tim saves the goal and kicks it out, but Adam is back there and accidentally knocks it back in. We push hard close to the end of the game and manage a 2nd goal to win 2-1, in a match that had it not been for our player and the siblings, would have been 10-0.

Game 2 at 11 AM. The team we were supposed to play at 4, said they didn't want to stay so late, and wanted to move the game up if possible. We said sure and went at it. They were a bit bigger than we were, but slower. They did pass well and when they had an open shot, they didn't miss. I had sat Adam down for the first quarter, and before I brought him in, we were down 2-0. But then when Adam came in to tie everything up, our other players went wild. He scores twice quickly to tie it up and then the goalie girl from game 1, goes off with 6 goals!! A double hat trick. We score about 3-4 more times, I lose count and Tim even almost scores. We were not keeping score, but at the end it was around 12-4.

So we take a quick break and cook out hot dogs and everyone is having a great time.

Enter Game 3: At 1 PM. So we are now on our 3rd game in 3 hours. This is a bit absurd and you would never play a regular team like this. But here we go. I take a quick look at the team practicing goal kicks and immediately recognize them. We had played them in a road game a couple years ago and got waxed pretty good. 6-0 or something, it might have been worse.
They have 2 really, really good players and 2-3 others that can do a decent job of keeping things moving. But everyone of them looks to be 16-20 years old and very big. Compared to our average age of 13-15.

Then out comes our ref, OMG!!, this kid looks 6 or 7. I cannot believe this. Are you friggen kidding me??

So the game begins, I know right from the beginning we will have to play this team tough and hard. I decide I'm not going to sit Adam, but rotate everyone else. I put one of our best girls in goal and another on offense. Adam playing defense. They had their top player as goalie thinking their top girl would be able to handle us.
They were wrong. Most of the first half was played on their half of the field. We got 2-3 good goal shots, but nothing got past.
We had one great chance when the ball was bouncing to a player 3 feet in front of their goal and he catches it, then drops it. I'm thinking, ok, here comes our goal kick, but the ref doesn't call it!!
End of the first half, 0-0. Tempers are starting to rise. I can hear parents yelling from the sidelines about the ref letting the game get out of hand. Kids are pushing and now they are getting tired. This opposing team has never played a game, I'm guessing where they were not leading at halftime.

2nd half I put Tim in goal. The idea is to put both good girls on offense and go for a goal. But with sitting rotations, I again had to sit one of them. Tim makes 2 good saves as they have pulled their best player out of goal and him and their top girl are on offense. They are rotating weaker players, but their top 2-3 players are their the whole game. They have a break away as Adam let the girl get behind him. Tim is in goal and I know this is it, Adam gets down their and the 2 collide.
So they get a goal kick about 8-10 feet in front of our goal. I'm trying to get a wall setup and they go to kick it, so one of our boys, charges it and it bounces off of him and out of bounds. Thank God.

Game continues a bit and Adam has the ball right in front of our goal, the girl charges him, kicks him in the leg, goes down crying and the ref calls a foul on Adam. Parents are yelling at each other, its starting to get rough on the field and this ref is afraid to call anything, and what he does call he is wrong half the time. 90% of the calls are going against us.
This time, he lets me setup the wall. I've switched Tim out for one of our best girls in goal. The ball gets through the wall and our goalie, just saves the ball inches from the goal line.

A few minutes later I've got all our best players in, trying for an end of game goal to win it. One of our good boys, is just gang tackled. I run over to find out whats going on, and turn around to find one of their boys has tackled and is laying on top of one of my girls. I get him off and no call at all. I'm glaring at the ref, this kid needs to blow the damn whistle.
Right after that they kick the ball out of bounds, so I decide to send everything into a corner kick attempt. But no, jackwad the ref says it was out on us, even though we didn't even have a kid near the ball.
So all our guys are up on their half, so they put the ball down and try to kick it all the way down the field to catch us off guard.
Instead the kid nails one of his own teammates right in the face and the ball goes out of bounds. I decide, ok, great chance for one last shot, when the ref finally blows the whistle and says the game is over.

So it ended up a 0-0 tie. It is my guess our opponents had never, not won a game. They didn't know how to react. Their parents were calling our kids cheaters, etc.. It got pretty ugly. Luckily I missed most of it and heard about it on the ride home.
Just goes to show, parents are parents, doesn't matter who their kids are.

I still had a great time, we got out of it with no injuries, no losses and Tim got a great big trophy, as did I.

Whether we will go back or not, will depend on the parents. Whether we get a full regulation soccer field and whether we get a ref out of puberty.

Until next time...