Whoosh!! HMHS Girls Breeze Through For Dinner.

SEPT. 20, 2012 -- tonight we learned how team bonding 2012 style works, which is very quickly. 
Last summer Debbie and I had volunteered to host a team dinner and this was the night.  It was over in a flash.  I had forgotten that so many girls could eat so much so quickly. But

I had not hosted a high school event since 1995 when Kirsten was a junior and the team did breakfasts on the morning of game days.  Those were rush affairs as well, but they had to get off to school.  Now the girls do dinner. 

Debbie did an awesome job putting it all together with good food, red and black balloons and soccer ball plates.  The girls began arriving promptly at 6, still in game jerseys after two wins over Gateway, 2-0 by the varsity and 4-0 by JV.  In minutes our house was filled with hungry soccer players for the first time in years, and soon every chair on the deck and patio was taken as pasta and salad were quickly consumed.

Then in the blink of an eyelash it was over.  Thirty-nine minutes after they arrived it was time to go - off to see Heights play Township under the lights.  By 7 p.m. we had the deck to ourselves.

If the girls had as much fun as we did, the evening was a success.

  Tables just waiting to be filled

    Long line for the food.

 

 The deck was filled with hungry and happy soccer players

           And so was the patio.

HMHS defense

   SEPTEMBER 14, 2012 -- Good story in yesterday's Inquirer about The Haddonfield girls soccer team defense.  Although the angle was freshman keeper Taylor Sehdev, the story recognized the contributions of Mary Clair, Bridget Yako, Olivia Blaber and Gretchen Kiep.

   Defense was certainly paramount in Monday's 1-0 win at archrival West Deptford.  It was a typical HMHS-West Deptford contest: big crowd, physical, intense, down to the wire.  Haddonfield scored in the first half when the Eagles's keeper couldn't hold on to the ball and the defense did the rest.  If Sehdev was nervous playing only her second varsity game and her first under the lights, she sure didn't show it.  She made all the plays she had to, including an extended well-timed reach to grab a ball headed for the far upper corner in the first half.

  

If You Can Sing the WNT May Need You

As most fans know by now, Pia Sundhage has decided to take her song and dance routine to her native Sweden.  Sundhage resigned Saturday as coach of the U.S. Women's National Team Saturday to take the same post in  Sweden.  I never met Sundhage, but the reviews have been positive, and it seems she was an improvement over predecessor Greg Ryan. And anyone who sang Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkle to the media couldn't be all bad.

During Sundhage's tenure, which began just a few months after the 2007 World Cup disaster, the U.S. won two Olympic gold medals and a second place at the World Cup.

Not surprisingly, the best story of Sundhage's resignation comes from Jere Longman in today's New York Times.  Note that he refers to the "diva behavior" of keeper Hope Solo.  According to Longman, potential successors include the under-23 women’s national coach Randy Waldrum; the U-20 women’s national coach Steve Swanson; Tony DiCicco, who coached the WNT before; Australia’s national coach, Tom Sermanni; and Jillian Ellis, the director of development for the United States women’s national teams.

He does not say if any of them can sing.

"She Said Yes, Praise the Lord, Glory Hallelujah!" Congrats to Scott & Stevie

I was in the men's room at P.J. Whelihan's Pub in Haddonfield a week ago Friday when my cellphone rang.  It was my favorite male former soccer player and author of the second best blog on the Web, who happens to be my son, Scott, calling to tell me he and girlfriend Stevie Neale, had gotten engaged down in Florida.

Scott was looking for a song to announce the engagement on Facebook, so he came up with a pretty good one: "She Said Yes," by a British folk rock group known as The Wedding Band, a/k/a Mumford and Sons & Friends.  Read the announcement on Scott's blog.

We celebrated the happy occasion in Ocean City a few nights ago, where sister Kirsten welcomed Stevie to the family.  Looking forward to the wedding in early 2013.