High school soccer comes at you like a freight train. The season starts in mid-July and ends in early October. In between the weeks are filled with practices and night games that don't get you home until 10pm. Needless to say, we love it.
Callie had made varsity, but as the season began, we didn't really know what that would mean. How much playing time would she get and how would she perform on the field with girls that were up to three years older than her?
Our first inkling of what might happen came in the form of a text message from a friend who pays more attention to the local paper than we do. "Made the paper as a freshman...AWESOME!" That message accompanied a picture taken of part of the Herald-Leader's girls high school soccer preview. Callie's coach pointed her out as one of the standouts for the team. John went right out to buy a copy of the paper. This certainly set high expectations for Callie to live up to, but she was ready for the challenge.
While Callie was getting to know the life of a varsity soccer player, Reese was getting acclimated to her new club team. LFC is no more and instead we have Lexington Sporting as our primary club team. It's part of a larger effort to also bring professional soccer to Lexington, so it's pretty cool all around. This is the first year that Reese will play 11v11 on a full field and after two years with Coach Tom she now has a new coach, Coach Paul.
For the last three years Reese has played with most of the same girls. This new team brought together girls from a number of different clubs and teams, including some girls who had been playing up an age group. And on top of that this was one of the teams chosen by the club to play in a national league called Girls Academy. Among other things this meant our fall schedule included weekend games in Illinois, Indiana, Detroit, Tennessee, and Ohio. We didn't know what to expect, but everyone was excited. The picture above was taken after their very first game, a 5-0 victory over a team from the Chicago area. Seemed like a good sign for us.
To make things even more hectic, this year Fayette County changed up the middle school sports schedule. Instead of girls basketball starting in late October and being a winter sport, it started in August and therefore completely overlapped with soccer. Reese and several of her teammates had to juggle basketball and soccer for a couple of months, which wasn't easy.
The basketball coaches had to be flexible because without the soccer girls they wouldn't be able to put a team on the floor. And Reese and company were also good helpers at the fundraising carwash, so they were doing their best to contribute across the board.
In August, Grammy flew out so that she could see Callie play high school soccer. Due to the timing, unfortunately Reese didn't have a soccer or basketball game while she was in town. It is hard to believe that this was the first opportunity Grammy Gayle had had to see either of the girls play, but it was nice to have her join in craziness for a week.
Her visit also coincided with her 75th birthday which meant we are able to treat her to a nice dinner at a great restaurant that we could walk to from our house. It's always fun to have Grammy in town.
A fun aspect of high school soccer is playing your club teammates who happen to go to different schools. When Henry Clay played Dunbar, for example, the game featured five girls on Callie's club team. And this was almost the case every time we played another Lexington high school team. However, this also put extra pressure on Callie as she wanted to prove herself against those same teammates. Overall, Henry Clay was having an up and down season. They had some games where they clicked and others where they couldn't make anything happen. Through it all Callie was getting a lot of playing time, starting at forward, and scoring goals. She was learning a lot and gaining confidence as the season went on.
Reese was also going through a learning curve with her team. Coach Paul decided early on that he was going to have Reese play outside back, a position that was never on her radar. To her credit, Reese rolled with the punches, played where she was asked to play, and never stopped giving 100 percent. It must be noted that Reese is the youngest on her team and the way they create the age groups it means she is often on the field with a lot of girls who are almost a year older. The size difference, especially at this age, can be alarming and Reese was often guarding forwards who looked like they were twice her height. However she never backed down.
Her team didn't back down either. By mid-September we were feeling pretty good about the team as they kept winning games even against competition at tournaments from Georgia, New Jersey, and Maryland.
We had the good fortune of seeing Nana Banana and Sport in late August as well when they made the trip down with the same idea that Grammy had. They got a bit luckier because they not only got to see Callie play a couple of games but they also got to see Reese play basketball.
One good thing about 6th grade basketball is that they had a league just for 6th grade teams. The games were played every Saturday, which wasn't ideal for soccer, but we tried to make as many of them work as possible. Another great thing about basketball is that she got to play on a team with her good friend Mary. These two have played on the same soccer team for three years but this year the club made a strict rule about age groups, and since Mary was born in 2011 and Reese in 2010 they were now on different teams.
The Morton coaches are a husband and wife team who brought a lot of energy to the task. They were great working with the girls and had them running drills, learning plays, and above all, having fun.
Reese has played a lot of rec basketball over the years, so she knows the game. And she was a little bummed that she wasn't part of the starting five every time, but she still played a lot. The fact is, she plays basketball the way she does everything else - she hustles and doesn't give up. Her speed and feistiness kept her on the court.
The basketball season ended with a 6th grade championship tournament on a Saturday morning in October. At least three of the girls had to miss because of soccer conflicts we didn't think our Mustangs would last too long. Shame on us, because these girls won their first game and then they just kept winning. In the championship they scored the last five points of the game and secured a come from behind victory. Reese played almost every minute of every game and it was a blast to watch. Needless to say the coaches were overjoyed and the players were exhausted.
With basketball in the rear view mirror we now turned our attention to high school soccer's playoffs. It started with the 42nd District playoffs. Henry Clay has won their district something like ten straight years, but this year it was a new coach and the season had been up and down. The Blue Devils had a 6-10 record entering the playoffs and Frederick Douglass had only lost three games and was coming in with a lot of confidence.
The first game for Henry Clay was a rematch against Scott County. Just weeks earlier on Henry Clay's senior night, the Blue Devils pulled out a victory in penalty kicks. We were hoping our girls could play a bit better this time around. They started off hot with a goal early in the first half as Regan Spivey scored with an assist from Callie. What happened after was a bit surreal. With ten minutes to go in the first half, Henry Clay was still up 1-0. In the span of seven minutes, Callie scored three goals. A hat trick in seven minutes. Impressive for anyone, much less a freshman. The game ended with a 4-2 victory and two days later they played Frederick Douglass.
They had lost to the Broncos 2-0 earlier in the season, a score that didn't reflect how well they had played. And on this night they were fired up, especially because the Douglass team and supporters were a bit cocky coming in to the evening. Towards the end of the first half Callie scored a goal off of a corner kick. It certainly got the Blue Devil fans rocking in the stands. Douglass evened it up 1-1 in the second half and the stage was set for a tense final 20 minutes. With about eleven minutes to go, Henry Clay got a corner kick. Callie was taking the corner, and in a fun twist of fate, Reese was the ball girl on that side of the field. The first corner was solid but cleared by Douglass. Reese gave her another ball. Corner number two was cleared yet again by Douglass out of bounds. Reese provided the ball for corner number three. This time Callie put it right at the six-yard box and Grace Plummer headed it into the back of the net. Beautiful goal followed by some mayhem and high fives in the stands. When the ref blew the final whistle the Blue Devils were District Champions!
After the game they not only handed out a team trophy but named the all-district team. And since we had never experienced something like this, we didn't realize what was going on. Neither did Callie, and when her name was called she wasn't sure what to do. But there she was, one of four Blue Devils named to the squad. And it doesn't take being a biased parent to know that she deserved it. In two games Henry Clay had 6 goals. Callie scored four and assisted the other two.
One thing that makes high school sports so fun is that you play for your school and therefore your classmates come to support you. There were a lot of kids from Henry Clay there to cheer on their friends and the whole Blue Devil squad. Not sure we'll be able to duplicated this experience, but we are still looking forward to keeping the streak of district championships alive for years to come.
That finish in districts put Henry Clay in the Regional playoffs, where they faced Madison Central. Unfortunately it was a game that brought an end to the season with a 2-1 loss. The season ended on a down, but overall it had more ups and the girls have a great future ahead of them. As one final set of ups, Callie earned a couple more post-season honors. She was Honorable Mention for both the all-region and all-city teams. It truly was an incredible year for her and we are so very proud.
We had a long break in between the last game and the banquet, but it was great to have the opportunity to revisit the accomplishments of the year and celebrate the seniors. We missed most of the banquet last year to it was great to be able to experience the whole deal. We were so excited for Callie as she was named Rookie of the Year for the varsity team. Her friend Janie was MVP of the junior varsity. These two will be doing great things on the field together moving forward.
Callie is lucky to be part of a large freshmen cohort. There are a lot of just good people in this crew and just as many great soccer players. The future looks bright.
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