2012-366 Day 4 – Soccer

So I signed up for something else new yesterday, let’s see if you can guess what it is. . .

Time’s up. If you said soccer, well, you read the title, didn’t you? Another local church with a much larger sports ministry (Shepherd of the Hills) runs two Arena Soccer leagues every year, and I decided that I wanted to give it a shot. Why? Well, I had a few reasons:

1) We’re in the off-season for Rocky Peak Sports, so I’m not currently participating/coaching there (outside of the delinquent softball playoffs, which we’re going to run as a one-day tournament later this month since the entire month of November was rained out. Of course, it hasn’t rained since except for one weird cloud burst in the last two months).

2) Speaking of coaching, since I have ZERO soccer experience outside of kicking the ball around a couple times, I will actually get to play in a league where I don’t have to coach, which hasn’t happened for a while now. Don’t get me wrong, I love coaching in the Rocky Peak Leagues, and have even been moderately successful (although it helps that the other coaches pity me at draft time and let me pick early ;), but it will be nice to be able to just play for once and not worry about lineups or strategy.

3) It’s a sport that involves a lot of running around (assuming I can get off the bench in whatever team I’m playing on) and I figure all my mileage will allow an advantage over anyone who may be less conditioned. And I’ll probably need any advantage I can get, seeing as I just may go out there and trip over the ball.

The field is in the same parking lot as the gym I go to, so I’ve wandered over and observed segments of a couple of games over the past few months just to get a feel for what’s going on. Between watching and reading the rules online, it seems a lot like hockey (5 on 5 plus a goalie, can’t kick it from one end of the field to another without it touching a wall or a player, no ice or skates though). As for my role, it’d probably best if I was the midfielder as I can cover a lot of ground without having a primary responsibility on defense or offense, although I would love to play goalie (I imagine no one’s going to want to trust a rookie goalie though, maybe I can get some experience on the back end of some blowouts).

Anyhow, the placement day (it’s not a tryout, no one gets cut – thankfully!) isn’t until January 29th and I acquired all the necessary gear (er, shin guards and long socks) from my in-laws for Christmas, so I just get to hurry up and wait for a bit. Expect some updates on this in the future.

Weight: Coming soon, haven’t weighed myself yet this year. (Hope to at the gym tonight)
Yearly Mileage: 2 miles (also have a run scheduled for tonight)
Current Belt: White – Next Belt: Purple – Next Test Date: 1/7/12