August 19, 2001
Memphis Shock vs Hotspur

After winning Division 4 last season we got promoted to Division 3 for the Fall 2001 season. Our first game of the year was in the newly named Victory Cup for the lower divisions. This game was against a new team called Hotspur. We didn't know anything about this team until Carlos came and told us about a scrimmage against another D3 team. We knew we were in for a fight. Temperature was in the high 80's with a strong sun making it seem mid 90's. Field conditions were great.

We started off the game with 11 people. Guys were missing for various reasons. So, we started the game off. Or we thought we were going to start the game off. Evidently the forwards for the other team had on some junior shin guards on and they had to go put some man shin guards on. So nearly 10 minutes after start time they kicked off. Play was back and forth for the first 15 minutes, with most of it being right in the middle of the field. This team was rough. They went after every ball and weren't shy to knock you down. But of course neither were we. Although I must say, the consistency of calls against us as compared to calls against them, was pretty inconsistent. A good example was when Bishop was going to kick a ball and the opposing player got past him and there were the sounds of shin guards. The ref told him to calm down. But, when an elbow was thrown against us nothing was said. Go figure!

Anyway, just under halfway during the first half Bishop was kicking the ball to send it up to Mark, but he just missed kicked it and the ball went out of bounds. He yelled a cuss word. Yellow card. The ref said that GMSA is going to cut down on that. No warning or anything. A few minutes after that one of their players got in our box with the ball. One of our defenders ran into the guy with the ball and cleared it at the same time. The opposing player made a nice slide and won a penalty kick. The pk taker came up, did what I guess was supposed to be some mental distractions, and just barely got it passed Baxter as he got a hand on it. Hotspur 1-0.

About 10 minutes after that a bouncing ball was sent into the middle of the goal mouth that gave Baxter fits taking a weird bounce right in front of him. He mishandled the ball and an opposing Hotspur was following up on the play. Baxter pulled a Ray Lewis and took him down. Baxter, red card. This was the first red card that Baxter has had with us, and the first for our team since Jason Patterson did a few seasons ago. With our backup keeper Chris being out of town we stuck Kip back there. Not until he saved the pk did we know that he played keeper. On the pk he guessed the right way and saved a goal. Great first impression. With minutes left in the half Hotspur struck again. From a centered ball from the left Kip reached out and got a hand on the ball. It took an unfortunate bounce to a Hotspur and he buried the shot. Hotspur 2-0.

At halftime we were already kinda tired. With no subs our mid and defense was starting to show some fatigue. Playing a man down didn't help either. We knew we could come back on this team. Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be today.

At the start of the 2nd half our forwards and mids were doing some good work. They were moving the ball very well up front. They were doing this all game long, but we just couldn't get them the ball enough to let them show what they are made of. But like the end of the first half, fatigue, no subs, and hot conditions did us in.

After many shots that were off target Hotspur got another penalty kick. One of their guys was running in the box and Cam was following and got a foot on the ball and cleared it. While clearing, the opposing player tripped over his leg. Ref awarded another penalty kick. The shooter scored on the kick. Hotspur 3-0.

Hotspur finished up the scoring not more than 15 minutes left in the game from a forward that got free on the left side and he shot the ball to Kip's high left side. Hotspur 4-0. Finally, Hotspur got a card on what was not really a hard foul. They had many other harder fouls, with no intent of playing the ball that weren't called. But with the yellow card Cam ripped off the quote of the day. "Looks like mommy's wagon is out of the question for the weekend." Classic Camerism.

After the game was over our 11 guys just kinda sat back and relaxed. It was a long day for us. The team we played is a good team. They are basically Bartlett High School, and have been playing with each other for years. They passed very well and played well together. We get them 2 more times during the regular season and we should beat them at least once. Even if we had 2 subs the game would've been much closer. But you know how that goes. We did have a good number of high spots. Our forwards worked well together up front, passing the ball and showing their quickness. Midfield did a good job moving the ball around. Defense was under pressure a lot, and did a good job even though Hotpsur did score 4 times. We only had 2 regular defenders show up and had to push 2 back and another 2 more when Baxter went out with the red. We found out that we had another backup keeper in case Chris gets hurt or doesn't want to play in the goal. That's always a plus. But hey, the regular season hasn't started yet so we are ok. We should still do well this season.

Now, if we can just get people to show up to practice.

Dennis Thompson