Soccer Match 2007

It's Julie! Well… including today’s game, my record in the Poland vs. America soccer match is now 1-4 (and I’m pretty sure that we only won my first year because of some poor planning by the Polish coach leaving their star players out too long). For those of you that know me, you know that I don’t like to lose very much! However, when it comes to this game every year, the fact that I know we are going down seems to lessen the blow. The Poles grow up playing soccer (a lot of kicking), and Americans grow up playing football or softball (a lot of throwing – and that’s right- I said softball not baseball).

I had the honor again of being the goalie. The flailing all over the place was much kinder on my body this year seeing as last year we played on pavement and this year we got to play on the BEACH!!! How cool is that? Unfortunately, I don’t think that the sand improved my ability to stop the puka (ball) from traveling past me. Our team had a fine showing though. We scored the first goal, and then a huge portion of the first half past with the score of 2-2. Soon though, the Poles put in the Socha brothers (pastor of the church we work with and his two bros) and the ball began to look like a rocket that I just couldn’t seem to catch. We had the game early this year because Dan Hash was here. He, although the oldest member of our team, is the best player, and the Poles took pity on us and let us have the game today. Tuna and Molly were terrific on the offensive side, and Jensine is surprisingly aggressive on defense. Will, who had no experience playing soccer, decided that throwing his weight around was going to be his area of expertise. Phat (Cale) scored a goal, Cheetoh (Luebcke) scored two, Chatterbox (Boyer) got one and B.W. (Will) got one.

Hello to all of my family and friends. Thank you for praying for our team. I love you all!