Month: March 2013

soccer

Washington Spirit vs. North Carolina Tar Heels: Free subs!

Posted on by Beau Dure
mccartyJ
Tiffany McCarty set up one goal and scored the other.

So I went to an NWSL preseason game and a college game broke out!

A sizable portion of the Maryland Soccerplex crowd wore Carolina blue and broke into a “TAR! … HEELS! …” chant, despite the efforts of Washington uber-fan Stewart Small to interject “SPIRIT!!” The teams played with college substitution rules. For a while, North Carolina’s players outhustled their opponents to every ball and dominated play.

Then Tiffany McCarty broke down the left flank and centered for Carolina killer Caroline Miller, who lashed home the rebound of her own shot, and the professionals restored order against the mighty college dynasty.

“That girl (Miller) has scored against us consistently,” UNC’s legendary coach Anson Dorrance said of the former Virginia player.

Then Dorrance remembered McCarty from her Florida State days. “Actually the other girl was an absolute thorn in our side for four years.”

McCarty was the player of the game. She didn’t officially get an assist on Miller’s 27th-minute goal because Miller’s initial effort was saved. But she was indeed the “absolute thorn” Dorrance remembered from ACC play, and she doubled the Spirit lead in the 47th minute on a superb breakaway.

Stephanie Ochs, usually the target player in the Spirit’s three-pronged attack, sprang McCarty up the middle of the field. McCarty held off a challenge and made substitute keeper Bre Heaberlin guess before calmly finishing as she has so many times in Spirit practice so far.

Carolina managed little the rest of the way.

In the pressbox and on Twitter, we all had a few laughs about playing the game under college substitution rules at Dorrance’s insistence. He was far from apologetic afterwards. “We’re trying to develop our team for next fall,” Dorrance said.

Why not use spring games to develop players for pro play and international play? “The sort of player that ends up on the national team is not subbed out,” he said.

And he had one of those players in Kealia Ohai, Heaberlin’s teammate on the U.S. Under-20 team and the lone scorer in the World Championship final. Plenty of Carolina players could match the Spirit’s speed in a foot race. Ohai was one of the few who could match the actual speed of play, where one- and two-touch play is the norm. “In college, it’s three,” Ohai said.

In the long run, the substitution issue didn’t matter. The typical pro game doesn’t include a change on the fly when a player leaves with a bloody nose — Dorrance couldn’t cite regulations but chalked up to a ref with a brain — but the revolving door at the sideline didn’t affect too drastically.

If anything, the waves of subs provided a good test for the thin Washington team, which had several players on national team duty (UNC was similarly missing Crystal Dunn) and several others injured. Carolina pressed Washington early, beating the Spirit players to the ball and keeping the Spirit stuck in their own end of the field much of the first half-hour. Exhausted UNC midfielder Brooke Elby seemed relieved to see a substitute replacing her in the 28th minute.

“There are going to be some teams that are going to run and gun,” Washington’s elder stateswoman Lori Lindsey said. “They were a good test for us in terms of athleticism.”

The Spirit eventually responded to the high tempo, and coach Mike Jorden let a couple of his own players take a break and return.

“They came out the first 15 minutes and really took it to us,” Spirit coach Mike Jorden said. “As the game went on, we played better.”

Notes:

– Missing Spirit players, national team duty: GK Ashlyn Harris, D Ali Krieger, D Robyn Gayle, M Diana Matheson. Missing due to nagging injuries: D Candace Chapman, M Colleen Williams, F Megan Mischler, D Kika Toulouse. That left Washington with 16 players dressed.

– The absences also left Washington with a makeshift center-back pairing of Tori Huster and Casey Berrier, the latter of whom just arrived in camp after being waived by Kansas City. Berrier struggled at first, with Domenica Hodak racing over to stop a breakaway in her area, but she picked up the pace as the game went on and stayed in for nearly 60 minutes.

– Dorrance didn’t understand the question when I asked for reaction to the closing of Pepper’s Pizza, which is almost as much of a Chapel Hill institution as he is. His players did. “We’re really sad about that,” Ohai said.

Other game reports (will add links as they come in — feel free to add in comments):

– Official Spirit site

– All White Kit

– Equalizer Soccer

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rugby

Pack mentality hurting rugby

Posted on by Beau Dure

I have to admit I’ve always been frustrated with the flow of rugby. Not the offshoot of “rugby league” is any better — come on, folks, just put on pads and play gridiron football if you’re going to run things that way — but traditional rugby union just stops and starts far too often.

It’s not just me. The Economist sees the gamesmanship in scrums in particular as a thorny problem with no easy solution.

In the infamously limp match between Scotland and Wales, only three of the 13 scrums awarded were properly contested. Whole minutes at a time ticked by with no action. Craig Joubert, the South African referee, grew frustrated. So did the players. So did television viewers. And so did the 67,000 who had paid to watch.

via Scrums in rugby union: A muddy mess | The Economist.

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mind games, soccer

No Monday Myriad this week

Posted on by Beau Dure

Check the Twitter feed to get up to speed on world championships in speedskating and women’s curling. Maybe X Games Tignes as well.

Then here are a couple of things you should be / could be following this week:

– Soccer: U.S. men at Mexico, 10:30 p.m. ET Tuesday, ESPN. No pressure.

– Chess: Candidates’ Tournament. Winner plays Vishy Anand for the world championship this fall. Is it Magnus Carlsen’s time already? Standings/webcasts/etc.

And keep an eye out for NWSL preseason news.

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olympic sports

Olympic boxing: Pro rules

Posted on by Beau Dure

Boxing safety is more art than science. Consider this:

“There’s no evidence protective gear shows a reduction in incidence of concussion,” Butler said. “In 1982, when the American Medical Association moved to ban boxing, everybody panicked and put headgear on the boxers, but nobody ever looked to see what the headgear did.”

AIBA’s executive committee unanimously voted to add head guards to amateur competition in April 1984, and they stayed in place through eight straight Olympics.

But the headgear has long been criticized for diffusing the impact of a blow and allowing fighters to continue sustaining more head shots for a longer stretch of time. The gear also offers no protection to the chin, where many knockout blows land in boxing, while the bulky sides of the device impede fighters’ peripheral vision, preventing them from seeing every head blow.

So the headgear is going away — except for women’s boxers, for some reason. The story says nothing about the gloves, though.

But wait, there’s more:

The amateur sport also is moving to a pro-style, 10-point scoring system, discarding the latest version of the much-criticized computer punch-count systems implemented after the Seoul Olympics in 1988. Each fight will be scored by five ringside judges with the traditional 10-9 or 10-8 rounds familiar to fans of professional boxing.

So the inaccurate system they’ve been using for the last 20-some years will be replaced with a subjective system. That’s … progress?

Olympic boxing drops head guards, changes scoring.

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soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: Who cares about the stakes?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Earlier this month, I did an interview with CBC radio about Ontario’s proposal to get rid of official scores and standings for soccer players under age 12. I made a passing reference to my over-30 coed indoor team and our overly competitive games with nothing at stake but a T-shirt for a division champion.

The CBC wasn’t there to capture it, but a couple of days later, we had a perfect illustration of the point.

The problems started before the game. I had never seen a roster eligibility challenge in an over-30 coed rec league before, but lo and behold, we had one. The result: We had only two female players, which meant they would have to play the whole way.

Our opponents were rather smug about it, too. They might have been a little less conceited if we had challenged a couple of their players, but we weren’t going to go there. We’ve paid money to play soccer. We just want to play.

They spent the first 10 minutes of the game establishing a “physical” presence on the field. I was tempted to toss off my gloves and walk off. This wasn’t fun.

Thankfully, the ref took control. He started blowing his whistle, which clearly startled some of our opponents. They were used to whacking people in the back with impunity.

At the end of the game, I went up to thank the ref for minimizing our bruises. I had to wait, though, because someone from the other team was yelling at him. I don’t speak much Spanish, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t, “GREAT GAME! HEY, DID YOU SEE THAT MESSI GOAL LAST WEEK? THAT WAS SICK!”

Oh, by the way, they won.

So even after winning both the game and an unprecedented (as far as I know) pregame roster challenge, this guy needed to voice his complaints about the ref having the temerity to whistle maybe five of the 50 fouls they committed during the game.

We know we lost the game, and we know our record this season. We don’t know theirs. They don’t know ours.

And that’s why I’m a little skeptical of the idea that players and coaches will start focusing on the right way to play when there’s little at stake and no standings to peruse. Overly aggressive people need other means of restraint. Like a good ref. Or maybe having a few beers before the game. (That won’t work at youth level, of course. Especially not for the parents.)

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soccer

Washington Spirit preseason roster

Posted on by Beau Dure
No, it's not Hat Day at the Spirit camp. It's about 30 degrees and blustery.
No, it’s not Hat Day at the Spirit camp. It’s about 30 degrees and blustery.

At last, everyone who has been selected at some point by the Washington Spirit has been at a session at the Maryland Soccerplex this month. (Well, except for Natasha Kai, Jordan Angeli, Alina Garciamendez and Teresa Worbis, all of whom are in various states of injury rehab, school or maybe both.)

At today’s media day, we were handed an actual preseason roster with numbers and everything. The list:

#1 Ashlyn Harris – USWNT goalkeeper arrived in training today but will soon head back over to Germany, where she had been playing pro ball, for national team games.

#2 Colleen Williams – Strong U.S. U23 forward. Many teams will regret letting her slip to the fourth round of the college draft.

#3 Kika Toulouse – Free agent signing from Virginia via Sweden. Grew up in the area and played for Northern Virginia clubs.

#4 Domenica Hodak – Rookie defender from Maryland wasn’t drafted.

#5 Candace Chapman – Why a defensive anchor of the last two WPS champions wasn’t a Canadian allocation is beyond me.

#6 Lori Lindsey – Made a radio appearance with Caroline Miller last week but wasn’t able to report to camp until Wednesday, missing out on her birthday cake. U.S. national team allocation but not getting call-ups right now. She played her way onto the national team with good performances at the Soccerplex once before.

#7 Megan Mischler – Supplemental draft pick from West Virginia via Sweden.

#8 Diana Matheson – Small but impactful Canadian midfielder trained for the first time today.

#9 Ingrid Wells – Free agent from Georgetown – also via Sweden, also small but skilled. Pitchside Report blogger.

#10 Caroline Miller – Second-round draft pick from Virginia. Hat trick in first training session.

#11 Ali Krieger – Came into practice on Wednesday, then immediately left for appearance coinciding with men’s national team game in Denver. Soon after that, she’ll be back with the nationals.

#12 Olivia Wagner – Maryland rookie punched in lone goal in scrimmage against Penn State.

#13 Julia Roberts – Virginia rookie went undrafted. That was what we in the business call a “mistake.” Strong on the ball.

#14 Tiffany McCarty – U.S. U23 forward and first-round draft pick has knocked in a few goals in training. Good mix of athleticism and skill.

#15 Robyn Gayle – Canadian defender arrived at training today.

#16 Danielle Hubka – Yet another Maryland rookie. It’s as if they’re trying to counterbalance the Virginia contingent.

#17 Hayley Siegel – Santa Clara alum has local ties — played for D.C. United Women last year and is an assistant coach at Georgetown.

#18 Chantel Jones – Goalkeeper from Virginia via Iceland looked sharp in Penn State scrimmage.

#19 Skyy Anderson – Also from Maryland, but she’s a year out of school. Defender.

#22 Stephanie Ochs – Athletic U23 forward was the third pick in 2012 WPS draft and the third pick in the 2013 NWSL supplemental draft.

#23 Tori Huster – Second-round supplemental pick from Florida State via Western New York, where she played with Ochs, is the easiest player to spot from a distance. (Look for the reddish hair.)

#24 Diana Weigel – You’d never guess from her unassuming personality, but the William & Mary defender who played with D.C. United Women last season is also a DJ. And a skilled outside back.

They list a blank space by #25. They skipped #20 and #21. Anyone else?

http://twitter.com/hollyking10/status/314907713811402752

Ah. King was here for the tryout, so she has at least attended one session with the coaching staff this month.

That’s still only 23. Kai, Angeli, Garciamendez, and Worbis might make it to the Soccerplex this spring, but they’re not expected in preseason.

Three players from the Penn State scrimmage — Heather Cooke, Ari Calderon and Alex Brandt — are no longer in camp. Calderon and Brandt have schoolwork to finish. With the Spirit entering a reserve team in the W-League, a couple of those players and maybe others who appeared at the tryout could resurface in a few weeks.

And I’ll bury the lead for those who don’t already know: One of my projects this year is an ebook on the Spirit. I’ll publish it right after the season ends. Haven’t decided yet how to incorporate the video and photos I’m shooting, except as documentary evidence that some of their players were aiming at me during one of the drills. They know who they are.

It’s a great team to follow — young, athletic, freewheeling, and fun. The constant drives up 270 will be worth it.

4
mma

The Ultimate Fighter 17, Episode 9: Pores of a champion

Posted on by Beau Dure

The recap: Bubba wanted to fight Kevin, but Kevin fought Collin instead. And he stunk. But he’s happy to get another chance. The stitches in his forehead are frowning.

Bubba has a tearful confessional about wanting to see his daughter more. Then Team Jones’s coaches pump him up, saying he’s one of the best fighters in the house. The bad news: Bubba looks nervous. To drill that home, we get another confessional with an EXTREME CLOSEUP! SEE INSIDE BUBBA’S PORES! HE HAS THE PORES OF A CHAMPION!

The housemates recalled that Bubba’s callout of Kevin was the only callout of the season. Josh Samman can’t cede the spotlight that easily, so he calls out Jimmy Quinlan, mostly on the grounds that he’s … in the room.

But in practice, Uriah wants to fight Josh. And Jimmy, who tends to grapple people rather than knock them unconscious, says he wants to see Uriah beat the piss out of him.

Chael Sonnen then continues his transformation from trash-talking court-maneuvering bad boy to the Guru of Positive Coaching. “If his opponent is better, we can live with that. But we’ve got to see the real Kevin Casey.”

Casey has been practicing with a mask on to protect his cut. It looks like he’s auditioning for an MMA-themed remake of Silence of the Lambs.

Now it’s Thanksgiving dinner, and Sonnen proves himself the toastmaster. “Jon, it is a sheer disappointment, finding out what a nice gentleman you are.”

Some people are griping about not getting enough food. Bubba is cutting weight. Bubba angry. Bubba smash. Someone’s saving some food for after the fight, right?

But after another wholly unnecessary EXTREME CLOSEUP of Josh, Bubba steps up and makes weight. Kevin, on the other hand, needs to drop his drawers and step behind the Towel of Shame. He has trouble putting his pants back on. “I just don’t know what to do right now,” Sonnen says. He thinks maybe he should help, but …

Is it too late to have Chael replace Charlie Sheen on Anger Management? I’d watch that.

Dylan Andrews is afraid that Bubba might go crazy if he loses. Me too. Especially after the third “I should be able to smash this guy” confessional from Bubba in this episode.

Bubba and Kevin talk more. And more. And some ads. And Dana tells us it’s the wild-card fight. Finally, Steve Mazzagatti gets us started.

Kevin immediately gives up a takedown. I’d say he pulled guard, but he didn’t seem happy there, and he wall-walks his way up and out. Then he gets a takedown of his own, bending Bubba in all sorts of uncomfortable ways. Through 2:30 of the fight, it’s hard to recall a single strike.

Bubba eventually stands. Kevin holds him against the fence, but Bubba still manages to land some knees. Unfortunately, Kevin trips him down in the last 30 seconds, and Bubba just looks irritated for the rest of the round.

The second round finds Bubba again unable to remain at optimum kickboxing distance. He’s effective at dirty boxing, though, and he takes down Kevin in side control. Then he remembers the “pound” part of “ground and pound,” which Kevin doesn’t seem to enjoy.

An elbow sends Kevin’s mouthpiece flying, leading to some unusual corner advice: “You want that mouthpiece! Go get it!” Kevin works his way closer to it, but Bubba is effectively beating him up with good fists and elbows. The Sonnen staff is reduced to the Rampage-style corner advice of “Get up!”

So did the judges give a 10-8 in the second round? Of course not. We’re going to a third round. Kevin has to be helped to his corner.

We were promised a big finish, and we don’t have much time for much else. In fact, we have NO time, because Kevin can’t get up off his stool.

Bubba yells to Dana White, “Does that count as a finish?” Dana, smiling: “Good question! Yeah, we’ll give it to you.”

Fight recap: Chael is pleased that Kevin turned it into a grappling match rather than a fight in the first round. Then one of Chael’s team yelled into the cage that Bubba was breaking. Bubba angry. Bubba smash — for real this time. Afterwards, Bubba yelled not to tell him he’s breaking. Point taken.

Kevin’s departure puzzles Chael. “This was new to me,” the coach/philosopher says. Kevin says he once had kidney failure in a fight. He leaves in an ambulance. So we’re supposed to infer that he had kidney failure again?

Quarterfinal time. Dana says he usually brings in the fighters to get their preferences. This time … he also will do that. OK then.

One person (Collin?) actually calls out Uriah. But Uriah calls out Josh. They ask Josh about that, and he says Uriah is ducking Collin. Right.

As with Lesnar and dos Santos, the coaches surprisingly agree on everything. Dylan and Luke called each other out, so that’s easy.

But Dana has final say:

– Collin vs. Kelvin
– Dylan vs. Luke (New Zealand vs. UK)
– Josh vs. Jimmy
– Uriah vs. Bubba

Aw, come on. That’s not fair. Uriah: We all had this Scooby-Doo look on our faces. He does a good sound effect to illustrate — ah, the limitations of print render it impossible for me to replicate it.

So Josh and Jimmy get the fight that one of them really wanted and one sort of wanted. Dylan and Luke get their Battle of the Accents. The other four are going back to the house wondering what they did to piss off Dana.

On the next episode, we get an overhead shot of Brittney Palmer’s cleavage. Then two fights. And Ronda Rousey visits. Never say the producers don’t understand their demographic.

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soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: “Messi would never have made it in the USA”

Posted on by Beau Dure

The U.S. youth soccer system is often criticized as too Anglo. Too athletic. Too focused on big brawny suburbanites, too resistant to Hispanic players and their magical ball skills.

And so the argument goes that if Lionel Messi had been raised in the USA, he wouldn’t have made it.

To which I say: B&*$%@!

As evidence, allow to present a quick peek at the most hyped U.S. player in history:

If you saw Freddy Adu play over the years, you know he was never a dominant physical specimen. He could be explosive with the ball, but he’s not the fastest guy in the world. And he’s not a big guy.

If anything, Messi is more physically imposing than Adu. Messi can score goals with defenders draped on him. Adu is more likely to be muscled off the ball.

Maybe the Ghanaian pickup games in which Adu learned his trade were better for development than American U8 games. Fine. But it’s a fallacy to think a 10-year-old Messi would be overlooked by U.S. teams.

Then we would ruin his career.

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