Sam started his soccer season a couple of weeks ago with practice, but the team may need quite a few more practices to have any shot of winning a game this year.  The team lost 12-0 on Saturday…. at least we stopped counting at 12.  Sam played the entire second half and had a few good defense plays late towards the end of the game.  Of course, he had quite a bit of encouragement in the second half from his father on the sidelines.  By the end of the game, the coach was challenging his team to score just one goal, but after 3 different goalies it was obvious we couldn’t stop them.  Practice is every Sunday at 2pm and Alex will probably go out and try to help as well.

TCS wins a close one against the team from Kinston on Friday.  Alex had a few great plays, but no shots on goal this game.  The final score was 2-1 as the Kinston team scored late in the second half to make it interesting.  The team will have one more game on Monday (weather permitting) and if they win they will continue on in the post season tournament.  They will be playing the local team at home, so they should have a good chance of winning.

The TCS soccer team lost 3 and only won 1 game over the last week and a half.  Alex had a couple of really good games and a couple of just “so-so” games.  Their biggest loss was to the team in Wilson… lost 9-0 and we think Alex had just 2 of the 4 or 5 shots on goal in that game.  The last game was against Bethel (this was the one win over the stretch) and Alex had a couple more close calls on goal but just couldn’t quite make it into the net.  He did get an assist in the win against Bethel and another assist in won the of the losing efforts.  We are very proud of Alex this year as he continues to improve…  we still think he has a good shot of getting a goal by the end of the year!

We met Gung Gung, Nana and Aunt Courtney at the Botanical Gardens in Richmond, VA on Thursday morning.  The drive was about 3 hours both ways, but was well worth the trip as everyone had a great time.  We got there around 10am, stayed for lunch and then left around 2pm.  Sam had a birthday party to go to that night so we had to be back by 6pm.  We were able to take quite a few photos, below are just a few of them… Sam even got in the act and took a couple of really good photos too.

Alex and Sam, circa April 18, 2004

How many eggos do you think Sam has in his mouth??  🙂

  The TCU Tigers won another soccer match on Friday beating the school from Bethel 6-2.  Alex is continuing to perform better in almost every game and is finally starting to get a little physical out on the  field.  He had at least 4 attempts on goal and one was a header!  Lis keeps getting kudos for his play from the other parents too.  Most importantly he is doing all of this and keeping his grades up!
All of the photos below were from Friday, last year it would have taken 3-4 games to get this many photos!  🙂
  On a side note, Sam started soccer today – he has practice next Sat/Sun then his first game will be the 22nd.  The photo below is from the sidelines at Alex’s game.

This year’s school photos are in and both boys took good photos – some of their best ever.

The Tigers played an away game on Friday (still in Greenville) at the Catholic high school.  Might as well have been against a bunch of Navy recruits because those boys played rough and cussed like sailors.  Anyway, they lost 5-3 but Alex did get a lot of playing time.  Unfortunately they didn’t play very well together, more like a bunch of one man teams running around out on the field.  Hopefully by the next game on Tuesday they will get it together again.

After losing the first game of the season, the Tigers bounced back yesterday and won 5 – 2 at home.  Alex went from playing 10-15 minutes last year (80 minute game) to playing about 70 minutes in the first two games this year!  Lis had several people come up to her and tell her how good Alex is this year and how much faster he is compared to last year.  Considering he sat on his butt must of the summer we’re not sure where the extra speed came from, but we’re sure the 4″ he grew last year had something to do with it.  We are definitely very proud of him as he is becoming more aggressive getting to the ball and he has been making some good passes.  Now we just need him to keep up his grades.  🙂

So we tried out a new beach today, Pine Knolls beach – just a little south of Fort Macon beach.  It was very nice and the waves weren’t too big but they did have a lot of shells so Sam and Lis were both doing their own thing.  Alex decided not to make the trip and stayed home and made a Minecraft video.