He he he...I think that I have been living with our science teacher too long. That seems like on of his jokes. I know it has been a long time since I have written in this thing, however I do have good reasons.
Over the past month or so I have been non stop busy. We finished our soccer season, which was, to use a quote from "Monk" A blessing...and a curse. We hosted not only the girls tournament at our school, but the boys' as well. Two tournaments...two days and lots of soccer in the sun. My girls finished first in the regular season and so we won back-to-back championships was very nice, but in the finals we were not focused on the game and lost 2-1. Close game, but the better team won that day. For most years that would end our season, but not us.
Two weeks later we had our sports banquet which would be the last one that I was in charge of. And there is also a lot to worry about with that as well...are the trophies ordered? Are the names spelled correctly? Did you order enough food? How are the decorations? Is the power point with all of the slides of the athletes done and looks good? The students have a lot of fun, but if they knew how much went into planning and preparing for it, I think they would throw me a parade.
Most years after the Sports Banquet, I would only have to finish out the year with preparing for "Field Day", Not this year. Not only am I finished preparing for field day, we also weren't finished with our soccer season. Because we were in the championship game the last three years, the board of directors of the Far East tournaments invited us to play in the Far East tournament. This was totally our choice, but this was this was something our school has NEVER been a part of. So about two weeks into the season we got the invite and talked it over with my director and things seemed to go smoothly from his side so then I brought it to the girls' They were all for it...the one little catch was that this tournament was in Japan. Iwakuni to be exact. This is a marine base in Japan. Bases always scare me, not because of the big guys (and girls) with guns and muscles, but all the paper work that is involved in getting my team and coaches and one parent accessed onto the base there. It would take no less than 10 pieces of paper signed and gotten back in on time. Plus there was the minor detail of money. We would have to fund raise the entire amount of money that it would take to get over to Japan. The total was close to 7,000 bucks counting lodging and flight, entrance fee, t-shirts, food, this would not be an easy job but the girls were all on board. We had a small soccer camp for our elementary students which brought in a lot of money. One of the girls churches donated 1,200 dollars. Our school has been tight on the budget, and with the way that was going, we would not be able to count on the school chipping in ANY money. But we spent a lot of time in Prayer and our knees. We knew that if Christ wanted this He would have to be the focus of it. Up until a few days before our banquet we still were short about a thousand dollars and looked like we couldn't go, but a few late donations came in and we were able to fund the entire trip without any money being taken out of our girls or their parents pockets. We left last Saturday and stayed until Thursday morning. We played six soccer games and lost four of them, however we did come in 4th place out of 6 teams. Three of those teams were base schools. Which means they were a LOT bigger then we were. We were only able to bring 11 girls. For those who don't know the rules to soccer, you have to have 11 to play. This meant they played all 6 games with no subs. They were beat physically and mentally by the end of the day on Wednesday. We played Taegu first and lost 4-0 at 8:00 Monday morning...then we beat a local team from Hiroshima 6-0 at 11:00 then we played a third game at 5:00 against the base school across the street from us here in Korea called Osan who beat us 5-1. We had beaten Osan here in Korea 3-2 and so we were pretty bummed about that loss, but in the same sense we had playd a lot of soccer in one day and so we needed some rest. During the last game, in fact the last kick of the game my star player went down with an ankle injury. We had to have it x-rayed and we were told it wasn't broken but she would have to not play the rest of the tournament...when we got her back to her room, she looked at me and said "I'm playing". I told her to get some rest and we would take a better look at it tomorrow. We got to the field expecting to play the school from Hiroshima again, looking for that easy game, but instead we were told that the bracket for the tournament was made wrong and we would have to play Korea International School. A team from our division here in the KAIAC league. We played them twice here in Korea. The first time in a lightning and thunder storm that had to be delayed twice. We were down 3-0 and came back to win 5-3. Then when we played them at our place we tied them 1-1. So playing them would be a little harder then playing the team we beat 6-0, that really wasn't that close. The girls took it in stride and came out and beat them 4-0. The girl with the ankle injury scored two goals and came off the field and told me..."I told you I would play". The semi final match would be against the team we lost to first. Taegu had 10 subs, and in the bracket play the games would go from 30 minute halves to 40 minute halves. 20 more minutes? This was crazy. I wish I could tell you that it ended up being a Hoosier moment or one of those fantastic moments you always want to hear about but in our own way it kind of was. We played 20 more minutes and more tired against a team twice as big as us and we lost 3-0. We let up less goals in more time, and the girls came off the field happy with the outcome. Our last game was the next morning. The winner would get 3rd and the loser 4th. We played hard for a half against Osan again and held them to a 1-1 tie. Then in the second half my girls had nothing left in their tanks. Their girls would run by us like we were standing still. We ended up getting beat 7-1. But that score only tells half a story. Amy Peterson, Kim Wadsworth, Ashley Pierpoint, Sophia Yoo, HeeJung Kim, SoYoung Wolfe, Jeeyoung Wolfe, Jackey Lane, Becky Hennessey, Juliane Alfieri, Soojung Song...your names may not make many papers, but your play and your determination will stay not only with you but will inspire others to play like true sportsmanship. I love you all and will miss you terribly when I move on to my new school. Our school placed 4th and took home three awards. Amy Peterson bum ankle and all was voted one of 12 all tournament. Out of all six teams SoYoung Wolfe was voted best Goal Keeper and Our team played well enough that after every game the refs would come up to us and praise our sportsmanship and how well we played...they honored that by awarding us the "Best Sportsmanship" award. I know that all I talked about was the tournament, but that was what we were there for. I will talk a little more about other things we did later. I know I talked a lot about this but this was so huge. But as you can see for the past three months since we started soccer season it has been non stop...not to mention that I also got an "A" in the class that I took to begin my way towards a Masters degree...hard to believe that I have a 4.0...hehehehe Anyway I just thought you might need a little update for those that check in every now and again. I will be hopefully able to keep in touch a little more now that things will wind down, but I miss all of you and love you all as well...take care and I will be back soon.
peace out...later on
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