Soccer Saturday

It was Opening Day of soccer today. Our town recreation department, which has run an in-town league for years, just combined with one of the local traveling leagues. Now there are three levels, higher fees, and we had an Opening Day ceremony for the first time ever.
This is William's team (he's the one in white). We get two jerseys, one red, one white. The schedule tells you which team is which color, but not everyone knows to look at the schedule. I guess.
Rachel's team only had 5 girls show up. The rest of them were smart enough to sleep in - this event started at 8:30am and our game wasn't until 10:30. Rachel's flashing the peace sign. I'd love to say it was "v" for victory, but we haven't won a game in two years. But they've all been close!
The girls got really bored after the teams paraded around the track. There were several speakers, including the mayor, but they didn't use the stadium PA. They had a dinky little speaker hooked up to the microphone, and even the people who were standing close by had trouble hearing. We couldn't even tell someone was speaking.

We've had several days of lovely fall weather and cool temperatures, but of course, just in time for soccer, we had heat and humidity today. It was pretty awful in the sun, but fortunately there were clouds on occasion.

I don't have any pictures to post of Rachel's game. I didn't even GO to Rachel's game. Naturally, given that John's out of town on a weekend (which is rare), their games were at exactly the same time, in two different locations.

Doesn't it look like William is the super awesome soccer player in this shot? Alas, his actual play was more like the picture below.Don't ask me what he's looking at. It does not appear to be the ball, or his teammates, or even the goal. He mostly follows the ball around, although he always appears to be thinking about something else entirely. However, after the game, he complained that even his own teammates never let him kick the ball - which prompted a whole discussion about going after the ball and the realities of competition.

Yeah, I'm not seeing any career potential here. But his team managed to win, 3-2. And Rachel? Who plays hard and pays attention (and is admittedly almost 4 years older)? Rachel's team lost again. 2-3. But it was close!