Schwan Cup, Day Two

Blog Reading 101 is now in session… ☺

For those of you new to blog reading, I’ll try to share a few useful tidbits now and then. Blog is short for “weblogs,” and they are online journals. One neat aspect of blogs is the “Comments” section. At the end of each entry, there is a spot that says “___comments.” This is a link that allows readers to leave a comment about the entry. Readers can also read the comments left by others. This allows the blog to become interactive! So, if you’d like to leave a comment for me or others to read, just click on the link and give it a try!

Also, please forgive me in advance for my soccer game pictures; they are not the best. I do know that a couple of other parents took some good shots, and I will try to get those into Flickr too.

We awoke to a hotter and more humid day, ready for our first game of the tournament. The boys had some team meetings, a light lunch, and “down time” in their rooms to prepare for the game.

The temperature hovered around 90 degrees by the time we headed to the fields at 3:30 PM. The sunscreen was slathered on, the cheap soccer chairs were in place, and the sun was blazing.


Our opponent was Cruz Azul. This is a select team affiliated with the professional Mexican team, Club Deportivo Cruz Azul.

(I should mention that our team was placed into the “Cup” flight for this tournament, a flight where “teams are generally formed from multiple communities as all-star or premier teams, in order to compete with nationally recognized teams.” Now we all know that is not us. Officials told us that we were moved into this flight because of our record, which looks pretty awesome on paper. Of course, we only have about 9 football clubs in all of Alaska to compete against, which makes our record a bit different from those of other states, but apparently that little detail was overlooked. ☺)

At any rate, this team was fast, athletic, talented, and clearly an “all-star or premier” team. Our score at half time was 0-6; final score was 0-9. We had three minor injuries: Jake got a cleat in the calf within his first minute of play and had to be carried off the field; he recovered by halftime so he could continue play. Agustin had an injury that briefly had him at the medical tent for a check-over, but he is fine now…and Jorge also left the field limping in the second half. All three boys are doing fine now.

This was a tough, fast game for our boys, but the entire team handled the loss admirably. I must say they absolutely never, ever gave up; they played their hardest every minute of that game! They came off the field red-faced, drenched, and exhausted. As Kirk would say, they emptied their tanks and gave it their all. We were proud of them.




Michael got a special treat when the game ended and he found out he’d had his very own cheering squad on the sidelines: his Aunt Julie and cousins Sam and Sophia!


There was little time to spare as we left the field, wolfed down some pizza, and headed to the stadium to meet a team from Illinois for the MLS game: Minnesota Thunder vs. Kansas Wizards.

We did take a moment on the way to cool off a bit:




This “Meet a Team” Opportunity was arranged ahead of time, and we sat with these guys to watch the game. (They plan to stop in at our game tomorrow to cheer us on.) The game was fun, but we sensed the Thunder were feeling much as we were, as the final score was 5-0 for the Wizards. I’ve included a few pictures of the event here, but there are many more in the Flickr Album.







As we walked home in the warm summer evening, and the boys rolled down grassy hills and kicked a water bottle on an empty field, George noted how much nicer it would be to turn on some lights and play games at this time of night, instead of in the heat of the day! Steve and I agreed, and we think that Fairbanks should play the Midnight Sun Tournament at night, so it truly is played under the midnight sun…wouldn’t that be novel?

The boys were excited when George stopped them short of the hotel and struck a bargain: 30 minutes in the pool would be followed by immediate lights out, TVs out, and sleep. They played, splashed and wrestled, ran upstairs and scarfed down leftover pizza, and were snoozing by 11:00. Aaahhh. ☺





We have two games tomorrow: at 12:05 PM, and 7:10 PM. These are followed by a…dance. Yes. A dance. I’m sure the blog will be full of news again. Bye until then!