Kirk Banks Soccer Tournament, Oahu.

Last December Peter, a friend of ours asked me if I'd be interested in coaching a girls team for a big soccer tournament in Honolulu. Without knowing much about it I said yes, but he had to be the assistant coach.

So it turned out to be an AYSO Select team. What this means is that in a regular AYSO season players are assigned to their teams and the league tries to distribute the skilled players so that all the teams are relatively balanced. In a Select league, each town has anywhere from one to three select teams (some of the larger cities have up to 4 teams). Coaches from the regular season are selected to coach a select team. The teams go Silver, Gold, and Bronze . The coach with the Gold team gets first pick on his players from the list of players from the entire league of the previous season, Silver coach gets second pick and so on.

We were Hilo's Bronze team, so we got third pick. Our first two picks were Syd and our friends daughter, that left 7 places to fill out. Based on the players I had in my previous team and players that Peter knew we brought together a full team. Our name became the Hilo Fireballs.

Before Kirk Banks Tournament (KBT), we played in a winter select league where teams from all over the big island played (Hilo, Puna, Waimea, North Kohala and Kona). Most of our games were in Hilo, we only played once in Waimea. First game things seemed to be going very well, for we won against the Hilo Silver team 4-2. It was a short lived joy though, because not only was that the last game we won during the winter select league, but it was also the only game in which we scored. Regardless of that, the girls played their heart out in every game, and they showed that they had a lot of potential as a team, we just were going through a bad luck roll...

After the season ended the girls were still all excited about going to Honolulu and play in the KBT. So after our last practice we had a little pot luck party.

These are the mighty Hilo Fireballs before our last game in the winter league

Fireballs during the last game of the winter season

Pot luck party after the end of the season.

Syd's fingernails before the trip to Oahu.

So we were all ready and excited to go to Honolulu and give it the best we could. Our first game was Thursday afternoon against Kaneohe-4 (from Oahu). Since we were playing a #4 team we (Peter and I) thought this was our best chance in the tournament to get a win. We held it 0-0 for the first three quarters of the game (games are played in four 10 minute quarters) and most of the last quarter. Both teams had good scoring opportunities and the goalies from both teams made great saves, but in the last couple of minutes of the last quarter a lucky shot and a lost ball in the goal area cost us two goals against.

So we started loosing 0-2....uh oh, not good considering that the rest of our games were going to be against silver teams.

Hilo Fireballs Vs Kaneohe

Friday came, two games scheduled, the first one against a Maui team in the morning. We had a little pep talk before the game where we told the girls that they could defeat any team in the tournament, that they had to play with their heart and just apply what they had learned so far.

Pre-game pep talk.

Well, between the pep-talk and the Maui team only having 7 players (no subs) something worked. The girls rolled over them 9-0! We even got penalized some "sportsmanship points" for not pulling back on the girls. Apparently there is some unwritten rule that a team should not outscore another team by more than 3 goals. Even if we had known that rule, I doubt we would've pulled back, the girls, the parents and us (coaches) needed something like this to bring the morale of the team back up.

To celebrate we took the whole team to have lunch at: Chuck E Cheese's (UGH!), they deserved it!

GO FIREBALLS!

Back at the Waipio Soccer Complex we were ready to face the Honolulu 2 team, certainly a tougher adversary than the earlier game, however, the girls were on a Self Confidence High and nothing was going to stop them. They played the best game they had played so far and prevailed 3-0!

Fireballs take the field against Honolulu-2

Syd (#9) makes a run into their goal area

Syd filters a pass for our first goal.

Syd tries a shot from outside the goal area

Saturday our game against Mililani 2 (Oahu) was not until 4:30 PM so in the morning we went surfing to Waikiki, and then to the water park, and then to the game. The girls were at this point playing at the top of their game. Mililani proved to be the toughest team we played, and at the end the girls were able to hold them to a 1-0 victory!

Under dark gray skies (home field advantage?) the Hilo Fireballs took the field...

In the last minutes of the game a miraculous save right on the line from our goalie (who by the way scored the winning goal in an earlier quarter) kept the score 1-0 in our favor....

It was a Great Tournament and the Girls Performed like TRUE CHAMPIONS!

At the end of the tournament, even though we did not win a sportsmanship award everyone in the team, including parents and coaches was very happy. So happy that we will be putting the team again together for another big soccer tournament in Hilo next July!


See you in the Volcano Soccer tournament!