A Tribute to the Boss

As I sat here last night writing about how I wanted baseball back, I feel like I wanted the Phillies to come back a little bit better than they are now. However, they still have a little bit of an opportunity left, so I will not get too depressed. However, I realize that I never talked about George Steinbrenner when he was alive, but I should give him a tribute. To say the least, I was never a fan of the Yankees using ridiculous sums of money to lure free agents away from their hometowns. However, after witnessing this whole LeBron James fiasco, I guess that George Steinbrenner was not that bad after all. He never had a television special to announce who he was signing. He signed the players to make a winning ball team and boy did they ever win. Some people have said that money buys championships, and that is true to an extent. Well spent money buys championships. Look at the Texas Rangers who under Tom Hicks have spent crazy sums of money and have had limited success. Steinbrenner was able to get the right people around him who knew how to assemble a winning ball team. The budget definitely made it possible, but it was not done by random chance. We will miss the Boss, but his Yankees better not take down my Phillies this year.
Photo by Sev! on Flickr

Take Power Soccer Defense Up a Notch

I think today is an appropriate day to return to the topic of power soccer. I was thinking about our upcoming match on July 25, and I was thinking about how we might adapt our game to bring something new. What I am thinking about it so we potentially might be able to improve our defense for a more efficient system.

As I have said many other times, this game relies on communication. However, this is easier to say than to do. However, I think that the advantage to playing defense is that you only have two dimensions to defend. The ball can go forward and backward or left and right. In regular soccer, you need to worry about up and down as well. Therefore, even though double teaming is not allowed, we have three defenders to cover the two dimensions that can be played. Therefore, that leaves us with one defender who needs to attack the ball. The two players who will be covering the two passing dimensions would be more than 10 feet away from the ball, so that one remaining defender needs to play the ball. Most people do not seem to hold the ball in power soccer; it is a very attack driven game. Therefore, the defense needs to be constantly challenging and attacking the attackers or else the offense will continue marching forward. However, if that one player from the offense continues attacking, we need to employ what is known in basketball as "help defense." If that one defender goes out to challenge the attacking player and gets burned, the rest of the defense needs to be aware and come to help. However, the difference between power soccer and basketball is that only one defender can come to help because of the rule against double teaming. Therefore, even more communication is necessary between not only the first player, but also the second and third players need to be talking to make sure that they know who should be covering the now unguarded attacker.

I could keep going on, but I will save some of that for tomorrow!

Photo by adobemac on Flickr

Enthusiastic Trip to the Airport

As I sat in the airport last night, I noticed a large group of people roughly my age obviously waiting for the same flight I was (there aren't many flights into Burlington after 10). While my sister and I just sat waiting to see the plane touch down quietly talking about basketball, I was really hoping I could understand what on earth they were talking about. There are about 15 people in that group, so I sort of assumed that they were waiting to meet another group, maybe a school trip or something else like that. Eventually, the plane flew in, though it was about 10 minutes late. My sister, myself, and the other group all migrated down towards the gate area. My passenger came before theirs, so as I talked to my cousin Justin, I must admit that I was a bit distracted wondering what would happen when whoever this group was waiting for came off the plane. I didn't have to wait too long because they started chanting his name and clapping. Somewhere, I bet we all want a big group of people to cheer for us when we come home. However, the whole time they were chanting, nobody was coming, so it was kind of odd. Finally, their one passenger came, they all mobbed him in a large jubilant pile. So, I'm just saying, if I ever fly home on an airplane, I want 15 people there chanting to pick me up (just kidding).
Photo by Bakar_88 on Flickr