Friday, March 28, 2008

Torneo!

Tournament banner...Fernanda's stellar coloring
Live action

Winning juggler and her new ball...sideways, sorry


The third place team with their new Asphalt Green jerseys



The tournament brackets...INDO school champions!




Boys watching the tournament from on top of the goals





Milton in the opening ceremonies, right before they suddenly started singing the national anthem






Against all odds, we actually hosted a tournament today. All week we kept asking Milton if there was anything we needed to do in order to ensure that teams knew about it, and he insisted that he would take care of everything. At 2pm, when the tournament was scheduled to begin, not only were there no teams, but there was no Milton. Sure enough, one by one (literally, player by player) people started to roll in and by 3 we had a full 6 team bracket.

The devil ants that were consuming everyone´s feet one bite at a time weren´t the only hiccup, as men´s league players started to arrive for their 3:30 league game which Milton had previously told us was rescheduled. We used the interruption to hold a series of juggling and skills competitions, knowing full well that the delay combined with the late start would probably mean dusk would set in well before we could finish.

With a couple of mercy rules and creative time keeping, we managed to fit all the games in. Each of the top four teams received new jerseys for their teams, none of which had jerseys to begin with, and the top two received full uniform kits. Every team in the tournament went home with at least three balls. We were really excited to meet some new schools, and found out that the best player in Granada just might be a 12 year old from Lesquival. The schools will begin their futsal "league" (a month or so of games between schools) in the next couple of weeks, so we hope the tournament got them excited for their upcoming games! It was really fun to see all the men and boys sitting on top of the goals watching high school aged (and younger) play futsal on the newly painted field. We invited everyone who played today to Saturday practice tomorrow, so we are hoping for a good turnout despite the week off last week for Semana Santa.

Did I mention I hate the devil ants?

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