Photoessay #466 - Naomi playing soccer

Sunday afternoon. Susanna's here studying her EMT materials. Naomi has her friend Chiara here to work on their drama assignment. I'm downstairs, actually what I hear upstairs is quite a bit of piano playing and snack making.

Picture from yesterday's soccer game doing that catchup for Naomi. Kind of a new team, kind of an old team for us. U19 rec. Naomi's looking credible here. That goal in the background was just being stored on the side of the field, this is really mid-field action. Naomi likes playing rec soccer, you can see some height issues a bit. Naomi crests 5 feet, she claims 5'1" but probably not. Unfortunately it matches the height for women in my genetic families on both sides. If most of my female relatives claim to be 5'2", they're lying. Height is not a strong point, ya just don't have the genes. And if height is considered a marker for biological strength, well....

The soccer structure in this state is hierarchical (maybe not too current)

Premier (P1, P2, Classic) - top 24 teams in the state at each age level. That's where Susanna played
Select - other competitive teams that play each other
District - other tryout teams not as strong as select
Rec (gold, silver, bronze) - team not determined by tryouts, true rec, everybody plays

Naomi plays at Rec Bronze. It's all good. Her particular team had not won a game in Rec Bronze for quite a number of years. It's a bit different than Pac 10 softball. You go and cheer wildly if they say get the ball on their side of the field or complete a pass, make a shot or not lose by 5 goals. These are 18 year olds, not kindergarteners. Last year, they won a game and it was huge news, for several days when I would see someone in the community they would say "Hey, I heard the Emeralds won".

Not in danger of making the high school JV. But teams on this level still have a lot of value. Almost more important that the top tiers, in some ways.

Naomi's the kid in the middle, btw