We had 7 men at our soccer match today. Let’s say 6 because I’m fasting and I’m not 100%. Let’s say 5 because our goalie got kicked in the knee 20 minutes into the first half, and ended up giving up some goals he wouldn’t have otherwise. Actually, let’s go all the way down to 4 because one of our two middies got kicked in the ankle late in the second half as we were pressing again to effectively guarantee we were insane for playing.<\/p>\n
They started with eight, and were up to 10 players before the twenty minute mark of the first half. We had a 4-0 lead with 5 minutes to go in the first half, and then they scored on a totally unfortunate clear attempt. We went into halftime 4-1 feeling really good. We knew we’d gotten lucky, and that they’d had a bunch of chances, but we really felt like we could make a go for it.<\/p>\n
They made a very good adjustment at halftime. They started overloading the backside, and started crossing early. This forced us to overload the backside as well… not a big deal. Since we were down men, I chose to instead keep someone always as a center back, and to instead have the folks on the ball side be much more aggressive. As in, if you’re the left back, then attack the ball. I shift to become the left back, and the right back becomes the center back clearing up the balls in the air. On paper, it’s exactly what we needed to do, but in practice we just broke down.<\/p>\n
I just don’t know what happened…<\/p>\n
I couldn’t clear a ball to a white shirt to save my life. That led to 3 of their goals. We had a goalie\/defender interchange error. That led to one goal. I just feel as if I lost the game today. It would be easy to blame the 10 guys that didn’t show up, or the fact that I’m fasting or a million other things, but in the second half I just didn’t execute.<\/p>\n
The amazing thing is that I genuinely in my heart believed that 7 on 10, we had a chance. Next time…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We had 7 men at our soccer match today. Let’s say 6 because I’m fasting and I’m not 100%. Let’s say 5 because our goalie got kicked in the knee 20 minutes into the first half, and ended up giving up some goals he wouldn’t have otherwise. Actually, let’s go all the way down to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[60,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQyAq-6c","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":29,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2006\/11\/05\/ssa-iii-day-four\/","url_meta":{"origin":384,"position":0},"title":"SSA III - Day Four","date":"November 5, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"And so it ends. My head hurts, my neck hurts, and my eyes hurt. I've grown a lot these last few days, and I know this workshop was worth it. The faculty were great, but their ability to teach was severely hampered by the fact that there were too few\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "SSA III"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":56,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2007\/05\/06\/final-match-report-spring-2007\/","url_meta":{"origin":384,"position":1},"title":"Final Match Report - Spring 2007","date":"May 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Cary Academy Junior Varsity Girl\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Soccer (2-8-1, 0-2-0) Cardinal Gibbons versus Cary Academy Thursday, May 3 Final Score: Cardinal Gibbons: 4 Cary Academy: 0 Summary: Without heart, a passion for the game, respect for your opponent, and desire, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very difficult to be successful in life. This fact also holds\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":553,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2012\/08\/02\/toksoccer-first-game-match-report\/","url_meta":{"origin":384,"position":2},"title":"TokSoccer first game match report","date":"August 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"On a windy night in Southern San Francisco, the lads of TokSoccer stepped onto the pitch for their first match of the 2012 Summer\/Fall season. Not a lot of experience, but a lot of enthusiasm accompanied the 6 brave souls. Fortunately, team captain Melih Onvural was able to recruit a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Sports Stories"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":58,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2007\/06\/08\/water-aerobics-and-more\/","url_meta":{"origin":384,"position":3},"title":"Water Aerobics and more","date":"June 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Laugh if you want, but it's true. I'm doing water aerobics to help stay in shape this summer. I just don't think anyone understands how hard it is unless they try it. Especially when you are as conducive to floating as I am, which essentially means you sink. The real\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Summer of Zimbra"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":173,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2009\/09\/10\/taking-responsibility\/","url_meta":{"origin":384,"position":4},"title":"Taking Responsibility","date":"September 10, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The flip side of calling out those who can't compete is taking responsibility when you fail your team, or you fail yourself. I feel like tonight I did both. We lost again, and I was a very selfish player. I didn't move the ball well, and I didn't play solid\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2006\/06\/19\/week-3-san-jose-yosemite-trip\/","url_meta":{"origin":384,"position":5},"title":"Week 3 - San Jose - Yosemite Trip","date":"June 19, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"This was a good week for us at work. We've built a prototype which is going to get showed off at the IHE Workshop in Chicago. I guess that means we're officially a big deal. Our mentor is really excited with the work we've done. I think we've taken something\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Extreme Blue Internship"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}