Blast HC Soccer

Fall 2009 was a decent season for The Blast. We finished 4th of 9 teams, with 3 wins, 3 losses, and two ties. Titans won the league with a very strong team. We added three great new players this season (Mark, Gunther, and John), but it seems like the competition is reloading even faster — Titans in particular had an extremely strong squad, and Lions and Edo’s outplayed us this year as well. I think we finished right where we belonged.

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This season was also notable for the endless string of rainouts and other cancellations we endured. We didn’t finish until well into December, playing the Titans in cold rain at Striker Park on the field turf.

As usual, The Blast just really lack scoring. We tried all sorts of new combinations to get the right guys up front, but we just can’t get enough goals. The D was solid as always, enabling us to get 3 goals and two ties out of just 11 total goals scored. Come to think of it… We did have one forfeit in there. I wonder if they credited us with goals in that game.

All that aside, this was another fun season, and I’m looking forward to indoor at RISE starting this week.

My camera doesn’t take great action shots, so you guys with the big lenses need to break them out next year. Here are a few decent shots from this Fall:

We’re overdue for a quick update here…

The Spring 2009 season went well enough, another middle-of-the-pack performance. The Blast worked a little extra in the offseason to collect a solid squad, and it showed, but we couldn’t put teams away, notching 3 wins, 2 losses, and 4 ties. No other team had more than 2 ties. We won the run of play in most of those ties, but we just couldn’t put games away.

We also had a fun Summer, playing Strikers summer adult league. We managed to find ourselves in an open division, which isn’t really ideal for a bunch of octogenarians. I don’t know what our record was, but I think it was probably ugly. Still,  it was fun, mostly. It was interesting testing the legs against some younger competition — we got worked over a couple times.  We also won some games, proving the old legs still have a little hops left. But the story of the summer was Paul’s ambulance ride. Paul was playing keeper and had a little collision — at the moment of impact Paul instantly was knocked out and literally snoring on the field, which seemed funny at first until we realized it was real. Paul got a ride in the ambulance and a concussion and a week of headaches and stuff.

So, Fall 2009 is well underway and the Blast are running true to form with 1 win, 1 loss, and 2 ties. We have a very solid team, but as usual we just can’t score enough. The defense has been great.

And as always, thanks to Casey for running the team and working to find great new additions to the roster!

(If you’re looking for a team, we’re always looking for guys over 40 with good skills and great fitness. Please leave a comment here on the site. )

A very satisfying win over Edo’s Squid today feels like cause for a quick update. Edo’s was a little off their game today and we took advantage of it.

While we were missing some of our top players, The Blast still put together a great first half to go up 3-0, while enjoying the sun and the wind at our backs, and even a downhill field. The second half flipped the table on us, but the big lead probably had Edo’s a bit shocked and we were able to nurse it through the second half, with a bonus goal to stretch it out to an unexpected 4-0 win. Edo’s is usually a very solid team, and an even matchup for us, but we seemed to catch them on an off day.

Also of note in this game, the refs had a poor day as well. We were using red lines, on a field that also had some scattered white lines, leading to some terrible confusion for the refs. It was fine for me, but they just couldn’t remember the red lines. They also apparently couldn’t remember the rules:

At 3-0 in the second half, an Edo’s player took a dramatic dive well inside the box and earned a penalty kick. The ref initially signaled a free kick outside the box, but the line judge corrected that. The kick was made, but another Edo’s player entered the box early on the try. The referee disallowed the goal and gave us a free kick coming back out, but there was much confusion over that odd decision.

Here’s a great link — 2008/2009 FIFA Rules

See page 42. By my interpretation — and the rule is quite clear — the penalty kick should have been retaken, as Steve actually pointed out to the ref. The call was terrible to begin with, so its a wash. It certainly seems unlikely that Edo’s sees it that way, rightly so.

Blast HC has a win and a tie, two games into Spring 2009.

I have finally managed to spend a little time here to update the Blast website. As we head into Spring 2009, the team welcomes back some top players who were away during 2008, and the Blast are looking forward to a great Spring starting in two weeks on March 1.