Gooooaaaaallllll!

This past weekend, Claire and I inaugurated our Weekend Indoor Soccer Season of Pain. Two teams (one with a ref and rules, the other with a coach and no rules), two days a week, two very sore ladies on Monday morning.

This is a blurry picture of the no-rules Saturday soccer. It was the first time I'd played in about nine months, so I was a bit rusty.

Lessons:
1. Running is hard.
2. I still have very little ball control. Oddly enough, I didn't develop that over 9 months of not playing. Pity.
3. Soccer is really, really fun. How did I not realize this when I was little? Oh, right, dislike of competition, fear of failure, fear of other children.
4. Sometimes, I score a goal and that's pretty cool.
5. I appear to be allergic to the gym on Roosevelt Island.
6. Drinking Guinness and eating "chips" with curry sauce after soccer is always the right answer.

Sunday was the "real" game with a grouchy Russian (I think) ref who was apparently blind in one (or possibly two) eyes. Claire and I were later arriving at the gym than we had expected to be, so there was little time for our team, Castle Grey Skull F.C. (boo-yah) to organize or strategize. We did, however, have time to obtain our handsome green t-shirts. The court was much, much smaller than the one we play on on Saturdays, and we were not allowed to play off the wall, which blew a whole lot.

Lessons:
1. Running is still pretty hard. Though muscle soreness goes away when your adrenaline is pumping.
2. Rules are hard. It took Will a really long time to explain offsides to me.
3. It is very difficult to gain momentum when everyone is constantly kicking the ball out of bounds.
4. It is very difficult to gain momentum when the team you are playing against is really effing good. As in "Who brought Diego Maradona's illegitimate child to America to play on an amateur rec team with Pele's long lost brother?" It just ain't fair.
5. It's nearly impossible to mark that chick who doesn't run so much as disappear and then re-materialize on the other side of the court.
6. Soccer, even when we lose spectacularly (to a team that should be in the "premier league," by the by) is still pretty fun.

All in all, it was a fantastic, though exhausting weekend. Next Saturday, I intend to work on using my left foot more, as I can't so much pass with it as impotently roll the ball to an opposing player.

We're hoping to face that team for the finals after we scrap our way through a dream-season rife with turmoil: Marty will take one for the team and get injured in the big game, requiring our old, grizzled, washed-up alcoholic coach (coach TBA) to stand in for the last half. Tera will refuse a cortisone injection to the knee by our corrupt team doctor, opting to play through the pain. I'll suddenly be able to use my left foot effectively, allowing me to score a miraculous-leaping-in-the-air goal. Claire will get kicked out at the last half for an illegal tackle of her nemesis. Together, we will take down the team in the ugly yellow shirts and triumph so that the name Castle Grey Skull F.C. lives on in Co-ed rec soccer forever.