On the way into my house just now I snagged my sleeve on a thorn on the rose bush outside my house. The most accurate guess I can throw out there is that it’s just about 10 feet tall, and hangs over your head when you walk up to my house. It was raining today, so I got about a gallon of water dumped on my head and sweatshirt.
Soccer
I can’t stand my soccer team. It really discourages me, every practice I go to. The first issue is that the majority of the team is comprised of whiny kids a year younger than me. I think I’ll call them nth graders, so it won’t give my age away. Call me paranoid. These nth graders, as it appears, have no sense of humor. At all. I can’t blame them, I mean, they’re nth graders. I was probably the same way last year. (Look in the archives. If you have the attention span.) I just wish they would stop trying to be funny, at least then they’re at practice. When they aren’t telling stupid jokes, or calling things “retarded,” these kids are just getting hurt. Of course, getting hurt isn’t a new part of soccer. It’s just that they take it so badly. One of them even started crying at a game one time. Before it even started. Actually, before we even started warming up. Absolutely ridiculous. For a kid that old? Seriously? I know I said I wouldn’t tell you their age, but I can guarantee you. These kids are older than fifth graders.
The second issue is that none of them take the sport seriously. They don’t try to do well at practice, they just screw around with their friends. They don’t try to learn from the drills at all. I can’t even really blame them for that, though. Almost all of our drills have at least one serious flaw. Most of the time it’s something about proportions. For example, today we drilled throw-ins, trying to make sure we got the throw-ins done fast and that the strikers were on their way to the goal when the ball was thrown. It would have been fine, but we had about five attackers and four defenders going at once, which is the same amount there would be in a real game, but a field about the quarter of the size we would have in a real game. It was just too crowded. Everyone assumed someone else would kick the ball away, or receive it and go in for the goal. More than half of the attempts, no one even touched the ball at all. It would just go right out of bounds.
The coaches are trying to teach us to play more intellectual soccer, now. We were playing direct soccer earlier, which means that we just try to get as many attempts on goal as we can. It doesn’t matter if they’re sloppy because we make so many. It’s better to be able to play both ways, though, in case some team has a way to counter our strategy. Unlikely as it is.
It’s just that the drills they’re using are teaching us individual techniques. Passing back to a midfielder from the wing, etc. That’s not what we need to learn. We need to learn a technical mindset. We need to learn to think the right way, not a collection of moves. We should be doing two-on-twos, to learn to give teammates in trouble an open passing lane, and maneuver using passing instead of little tricks.
Pressure
God I hate this English project. I should really start working on it. I’m just trying to get back into the blogging world, which gives me way too much reason to keep procrastinating. School is going to be over in just about two months, and it’s only just getting hard. I don’t just have to do this whole massive project for English, but I also have Tech; basically the polar opposite of an easy A. The whole freaking class is based on one project, and it’s a total gamble. It’s not like desk work, or a research project. You have to put together a ridiculous chain of simple machines within a wooden frame so that you use all six simple machines, deflate a balloon, and set off a mouse trap. You can use all these power tools, and cardboard, whatever. You have to put it together within the term (two periods of it a week) and then test it at the end of the term. If you make some little mistake, or don’t finish in time, you can easily get anywhere from a C to an F. If just one part of it fails, then the whole thing fails. So there’s kind of a lot of pressure.
I mean, this year it is fun. I have to admit that. I mean, it sounds fun, doesn’t it?* I have to say, though: I might enjoy it more if it weren’t at the same time as this term-long English project
*Okay, maybe not the way I put it.
Edit: My theme didn’t like the formatting I put, so that foot note looks pretty sloppy. I’m sorry.
