Monday, July 25, 2011

Besao VI: Gameday

St. Mary’s High School of Sagada backed out of our soccer friendly just days before it was scheduled. The gym teacher, Roger Gawidan, was able to find some soccer players that were willing to play on only a few days notice. They were 6 soccer players on full athletic scholarship at the nearby Mountain Province State Polytechnic College. St. James held their own against the scholarship athletes who were as many as 7 years older than the St. James players. MPSPC was clearly the more polished team, but that did not stop St. James from keeping the game close. At one point in the second half St. James was down only 5-4. However, the experience and advanced ball handling of our visitors allowed them to run ahead to a final score of 8-4. Despite playing soccer for only one month, we were able to hold our own against the best team the Mountain Province has to offer.

I couldn’t be prouder of the effort shown by the players in the past month. St. James is a young team that has shown tremendous skill in soccer in a very short period of time. We started 3 sophomores and one freshman, with another sophomore and freshman each seeing lots of playing time off the bench. Our goals came from senior and team captain Omar Lee Aiudengan, sophomore Jeremy Baguilod, and sophomore Ferdinand Cabog scored twice.

Here was a schedule of events:
7:00am- Start cooking 4 kilos of pork, 1 big bag of beans, and 8 kilos of rice. The simple yet hardy lunch costs only $0.60 US cent per head.
9:00am- Church starts. All players are in attendance.
10:30am- Church ends and warm ups begin. We see who can kick the ball through the tire first to determine who will be shirts and who will be skins.
11:00am- Kickoff. MPSPC is joined by one rotating St. James reserve player to complete the 7 on 7 scrimmage.
12:45pm- Game ends, players from both teams eat lunch together.
1:30pm- MPSPC players show some new drills to the St. James coaches and players and leave the players with words of encouragement and an offer for a rematch.
2:00pm- I run some conditioning exercises. A bus passes by while we are doing bear crawls, undoubtedly causing some new unpredictable stereotype.
2:15pm- I declare practice is over and everyone is free to go home.
2:16pm- All the reserve players (players who didn’t play vs MPSPC) and a few starters set up goals and have their own scrimmage.
4:30pm- The scrimmage ends and we all eat the leftovers from lunch.
5:00pm- I bid farewell to the team and we finally disperse after a rather epic day of sports.

Kicking the ball through the tire

Pregame






Lunch Time

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