i blame rap music...

ok so one of my first blogs was about how soccer was about to start for the year and how excited i was to get back into it, so i figured i would give an update on things now that the year is just about at an end. This has been one long frustration of a season. I say this because though our team has finished the regular season in 4th place(out of 5 teams) with a 3-5 record, with the way we have been playing, we should be at 5-3 at the very least, and we had a very good shot at being 7-1. in three of our games(though the score does not always reflect it) we played well enough that we should have won the games, but things did not bounce our way or our guys just weren't quite able to score some goals on the dozens of chances we seem to generate each game. take our last game against prairie(the first place team) for instance...until the last 2 minutes of the game, the score was 1-0 for prairie(then they scored 2 goals while we were pressing forward to try to tie it). Their one goal was a good quality goal on their part but other than that we had shut them down entirely. On the other side, we were dominating the game getting chance after chance after chance that we either kept missing the net, shooting directly at the goalie, or hitting posts(2 crossbars in that game alone). our players SHOULD have been able to put a couple of those goals in and we SHOULD have beaten the first place team in the league. In our other game against this first place team, they beat us 6-4, but in this game we gave them 4 penalty shots on which they scored 3 goals. this game can be blamed on us as giving any team 1 penalty shot is just about unforgiveable, let alone 4 in one game. point being though, that again we had them mostly shut down, and outside of the penalties we gave them, we beat them 4-3. this is the kind of thing that has happened to us over and over this season. there is only 1 game that we deserved to lose and that was the second game of the year.
There are times i feel like i am just making excuses and trying to paint a nicer picture than actually exists, but i just can't accept this because I know that we have a better team than our record shows and if we can bring everything together for just one game then we will be a scary team to have to play.
Probably one of the biggest problems thus far has been putting the ball in the net. every game we far outchance the other team and either we just can't put it in or their goalies come up huge(there are actually some very good goalies in our league). I alone have hit at least one post in every game we've played except one, and that's from defence where i only get one or 2 shots a game(i hate posts so much...shudder). and i have set up our players countless times for breakawaysand goals that should be put in with no end result. If we can just put a few of these shots into the net like we SHOULD be, then obviously our success rate will climb drastically. also for most of this semester we have been missing our second number one defenceman(me being the first) which could be the thing that takes us from a good defensive team to a great defensive team. when this guy is playing he and i rotate with one another so there is always one of us on the field which shores up the defence considerably. we have a solid group of defenceman, and the other guys have stepped up this semester and played very well in his abscence, but if we can have him back and have those guys keep playing the way they have been, then like i said i think it will be the difference between being good and being great, and it may be what we need to finally push us over that edge.
our playoffs unfortunately aren't for a month which means we run the risk of getting rusty and out of game shape which is unfortunate. However, hopefully this will give guys a chance to heal, get in better shape, and possibly come together even more as a team. Like i said this has been a very frustrating year because i've come out of virtually every game feeling that we legitimately should have won(note the word legitimately...this is not me just being upset cause we lost). I want to win that gold so bad this year i can taste it and i know that we have the team to do it and i look forward to turning things around and surprising some teams come play-off time. Here's hoping...