Announcement
A note of thanks with some snap shots of time
Since we won’t be having a banquet this year, some season ending thoughts.
A big thank you to the parents. Thank you for supporting your daughter and the coaches. We enjoyed working with your daughters. A special shout out to Mrs Saxinger and Mrs Keares for your help…. uniforms and pictures. And it would be remiss of me to not give recognition and my thanks to the past and current coaches of these young ladies. Your enthusiasm and knowledge helped mold the players in making it easier for us to coach at a higher expectation level as we built upon your efforts, and in turn… we know you’ll continue to build upon our efforts.
Three slices of time….
1) Every team has that epiphany moment of “we are a team”. Sometimes it occurs during a game, sometimes in humor, sometimes in a defeat or a win. Ours came at the Ephrata game. For whatever reason…. Jordan made a bet with the MS gym teacher that if she scored 2 goals, she would be excluded from gym activities for the next week. I learned of this “legal bet” towards the end of the first half. So 1st half ends, Jordan… zero goals. I kiddingly teased her during the halftime chat that we were putting her back on defense…. her initial facial reaction was priceless. So during the 2nd half, I’m noticing our players are giving up good scoring opportunities and passing to Jordan trying to help her ‘win the gym bet’. So fast forward…. Jordan scores with 10 min to go. And then she scores again with 3 minutes left. The team erupted into cheers.
2) We are playing at Penn Manor, the PM coach is continually calling out the name Bethlehem. So after about the eighth time, I ask the coach…. “Hey. Do you have a player named Bethlehem?” He replied " No…..I coach Bethlehem in club ball. I’m telling my players to watch her" So I asked him to stop it since I want our Bethlehem to respond to me if I call out her name. He replies… what do you want me to call her? I respond.. “How about her number?” The PM coach said “okay”. So Penn Manor comes to our field a week later. I yell out “French lady (aka Parise)…. Pinch in”. The PM coach says…. “Hey, we have a French lady, can you just call out her number?” All smiles.
3) So we end our season at Warwick…. definitely our strongest foe and being played under their lights. The team walks across field to the bench and gets settled. To paraphrase Mya ……“Well this is a tad disappointing. We thought we would be playing on the stadium turf field under the lights, not this grass. But don’t worry coach, we have time to accept and recover. We’ll be ready” And what a great competitive way to end the season with a thrilling 3-2 win. As we were making subs with about 6 minutes to go, the ongoing players are chatting how nervous they were. With a side note…. That may be the best game I’ve witnessed at their age levels in many years of coaching.
Congrats to all for a fun season of memories. Thank you to my coaching staff for your support and your efforts. A special thanks to Coach R for your friendship and chats. Thank you to the players for your willingness to learn, the steadfast efforts to play well…. you were enjoyable to coach.
And in closing and during Covid…. the season went pretty darn well….. Thank you. My best to each of you in life and in soccer.
Coach Shet
