“Failure happens everyday in practice. What makes you better is how you respond.” -Mia Hamm. Today I will talk about my experience at a soccer tournament in Oklahoma. This was my first out-of-state tournament. I was very excited to show up and show them what I got.

When we got there my dad grabbed my water and we went to go find my team. As we walked out to our team, I looked at the field and it did not look that good probably because it is grass. We start our warmups and we are looking pretty good. Then we start the game. In the first 15 to 20 minutes we get a goal. Then, in the next 5, we got another goal. And then another one after that. So at half time, it is 3-0. At the start of the second half, we gave up a little and they got a goal. After that, they got another goal. Then, we started to pick it up a little and got a goal, but they got one right after that. We finished the game strongly and scored one to end the game with a win of 6-3.

In the second game, we got out there and started our warm-ups. At the very start of the game, they started to foul us like crazy and the ref was not calling anything. So we started to react to it and we scored. But, then they came out stronger (by fouling us more) and they were able to score on us. Then one of our players got his shoulder hurt when he hit the field. Soon after that, we decided not to respond to them fouling us more and they scored another one. At half-time it was 1-2. We had a good team talk about how we really need to find a new way of reacting to them and come out strong. When we started the second half we did not do what we talked about at halftime, and they scored another goal. We had many opportunities but did not really use them to our advantage. Then they got one final goal at the end of the game. So we ended the game with a loss of 1-4, which was the first game we have lost this season.

In the last game, we played the undefeated team. We wore our white soccer jerseys and the field was all muddy. Again we did our warm-ups and we started the game. We started out the game and we both had some opportunities but just couldn’t get the ball to the back of the net. But then, around the 40-minute mark, we ended up finishing one. So we ended the half 1-0. Both teams came out very strong at the beginning of the second half. Then after a bit, they finished one and tied it up. No one could finish one after that, and we ended the game 1-1 for our first tie this season. That just wouldn’t cut it to make it to the championship. At the end our coaches were talking about the game and here is something they said that stuck out to me “It was really cool to watch the two different styles battle it out, but also no one changed the way they were going to play” Coach Brett.

At the end of the day, I felt like we did a pretty good job. There were some that we should have finished but there is always something that we could do better. During our second game, we might have had a chance with a better ref. But we can’t blame the refs because we decided not to react. I think everyone was happy with our performances.