St. Patty’s Day Soccer Pictures

Here are some photos from the Stafford Area Soccer Association’s St. Patty’s Day Tournament. Nick played defense for his Richmond Kickers team. It was a good pre-seasoner – ya win some, ya lose some. We played at Fredericksburg Academy on very nice fields with some good competition. Another tournament next weekend, and then regular season play begins.

Teammates, I have a few pictures I’ll email of some other players. I really didn’t have the best of luck with shots this weekend. This morning’s game was cool enough that I was shivering and couldn’t hold the camera still. And then there is the problem of becoming too involved in the game and forgetting to take pictures.

Nick is #8 in red.

This was a header in this morning's game against Real Madrid, a very good team.

Nick gets a header in game 2 yesterday.

The ball was in the black team's possession, but Nick jumped through with a kick somehow and shook it loose. You can see the ball on the right side of the photo. One of the disadvantages of watching through the camera lens is that sometimes I don't get a great view of exactly how something happened. I wish my camera had a higher rate of frames per second, because obviously this photo would have been better if I'd caught the ball closer to the kick.

I think this was just a kick following an offside call against the other team, but I just liked the energy of the photo. And the kid.

Left-footed Nick takes the corner kicks that are on the right, running from left defense to get there. This was a nice one -- he put it nicely in front of the goal, it rebounded a bit, and he was able to follow up with a header for the assist to his teammate Parker, who scored. I actually caught a shot of the header too, but I was too excited and the focus is way off--so I have evidence, but not a good photo. This was an exciting play because the score was tied 0-0 with under two minutes in the game. Congrats to goal keeper Pace and the rest of the team, especially defense, on the shut-out.

We thoroughly enjoyed watching all the kids play. Nick has some great teammates. Since this was our first official outing of the spring season, it was also fun seeing all the families and enjoying a St. Patty’s Day meal together at Legends, even if that did coincide with watching VCU lose to Indiana in the NCAA basketball tournament.

It’s been amazing  to watch these young soccer players work so hard at their soccer skills and fitness. Looking forward to a great season! Go Kickers!