Dakota's big soccer game

Dakota is playing soccer this fall on a team called the Eagles. I love soccer and think it is the best team sport there is for younger kids. It has action so kids like mine don't get bored, the kids who work as a team generally do better than those who don't, and kids who may be a little athletically challenged (like Dakota) can still make a meaningful contribution. That's Dakota in yellow getting ready to take that girl on! She moved right past him, by the way. But he did get in several good kicks during the course of the game.

Today was the fourth game for the Eagles but it was the BIG game. The Eagles had already won the first three games handily. See, there's that team in every league who is just better than everyone else. Most often these kids have played together longer (they trust each other) with the same coach (dedicated and knowledgeable) and have a combined seasons of experience much higher than all the other teams in the league. You might think that was us, but no, it's the Hawks. We got trounced and were jubilant. You see, the score was 2-7. A team that most often scores in the double digits only scored 7 on us. -AND we scored 2 on them. This is unprecedented! We play them again later in the season and I'm hopeful we'll do even better then. I'm the assistant coach so I feel pretty confident predicting that improvement. The Eagles are a great bunch of kids (to be fair, I'm sure the Hawks are, too) and they've made measurable progress already this year. I'll let you know how it goes after the rematch. As Dakota would say "dun, dun, dun, duuuunnn!"

Anyway, after the game we went out to lunch at the local pizza/pasta/salad/dessert buffet place. Here it's called Izzy's but I know you have one just like it where you live. Sometimes I think they all use the same recipes. The outstanding thing about this particular buffet place is the view. This picture is taken from the deck of the restaurant. It's just north of town looking south down the beach to the north jetty (that long skinny thing poking out into the water).