MYSA Lunachicks Soccer

The Lunachicks are heading to Winston-Salem, NC this weekend to participate in the TCYSA Twin City Classic. They’ll be participating in the U13 Blue division against teams from Catawba Valley, Matthews, and South Carolina (CESA). For friends and family coming along for the ride, here are the details for this weekend:

Schedule (TCC Official Schedule)

• Sat Aug 22nd 9:45AM vs CVYSA Blast Blue, Hine Park #3
• Sat Aug 22nd 4:45PM vs MUFC Navy, Hine Park #3
• Sun Aug 23rd 9:45AM vs CESA Premier, Hine Park #5
• Sun Aug 23rd 2:00PM U13 Blue Championship, Sara Lee #1

Directions to each complex and complex field maps can be found below:

• Directions to Hine Park Fields 1-4
• Directions to Hine Park Fields 5-7
• Directions to Sara Lee Fields 1-3
• Hine Park/Sara Lee Overview
• Hine Park Field Map
• Sara Lee Field Map

Good luck ladies and make the MYSA proud! Results can be tracked online at the tournament website.

GO LUNACHICKS!

The Lunachicks have started their preseason practices in preparation for a busy preseason in August. We’ve been accepted into the Twin City Classic tournament scheduled for August 22nd and 23rd in Winston-Salem, NC, which is always an exciting tournament. These will be the first official 11v11 matches the girls will play.

To help prepare for that, the team will face off against a couple of teams from Guilford United Soccer Club on August 15th in Mebane during the MYSA’s friendly weekend.

The team will be holding a Car Wash fundraiser at Advance Auto Parts in Mebane (1008 Mebane Oaks Road) on Saturday August 29th from 10AM through 4PM. So come get your car cleaned and help support the Lunachicks! All proceeds will go towards travel and tournament expenses.

We’re looking forward to another exciting (and hopefully more successful) season!

GO LUNACHICKS!

Every season the Lunachicks try to do something to ‘give back’ to the league, and that usually is a free skills clinic for younger girls playing in the MYSA Recreational program. The Lunachicks and volunteer coaches take groups of girls through various skills stations and activities with the Lunachicks helping to show the younger girls how to do various moves and skills. The Fall clinic had over 30 girls participating, so we were excited to hold the clinic again this season. However, with all the rain we had, it was hard for us to schedule the clinic in advance due to all the makeup matches we had to deal with. Once our schedule stabilized, we decided to hold the clinic before our last home match, but were only able to give people a weeks notice, so turnout was lower than normal. Still, the girls who showed up had a great time as did the Lunachicks. I want to thank all the girls who came out and all the coaches who volunteered to help out. Finally, thanks to all the Lunachicks who gave up most of their Sunday afternoon to help some of the younger girls improve their soccer skills. Great job ladies!

MYSA Lunachicks Spring 2009 Girls Clinic

Thanks to the Fairy Odd Mother for taking some pictures for our photo album.

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Congratulations Lunachicks on a fantastic weekend of soccer!

The Lunachicks went to the Beat The Heat tournament this past weekend and advanced to the semi-finals after going 3-0 in the group stage, shutting out all three of their opponents. The team played what arguably was their best match of soccer ever in the group stage, providing parents and coaches alike with a great display of ball movement, teamwork, and intensity. It was clear their hard work this season had paid off.

Despite the disappointment of our semi-final loss to the eventual champions, the girls had a lot of fun and did a great job. Coach is very proud of their effort in the sun and heat!

Onward to the Seaside Classic!

Here we are, halfway through our regular season, so I figured I’d take a minute to look back at how we’ve done and where we are as a team.

From the start of the season, a significant difference has been the intensity the girls are putting into practice. They are working harder at the activities and trying to learn. Yes, we still have silliness and such (we’re the Lunachicks, how can you not?), but for the most part, the girls are working hard to improve. That was one of our goals with moving to Classic, so that has been good to see.

Looking back at our matches so far, it’s been a mixed bag, but we’re showing improvement.

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Lunachicks – your coach is very proud of how hard you played Saturday in such nasty weather. Here’s a note I posted on Facebook letting everyone know how hard you played and the conditions you endured:

A lot of my friends here on Facebook are from Mebane, so I wanted to share something with you all. Most of you know I coach a spirited group of 12 year old girls – The Lunachicks. They did something today that made me extremely proud as their coach, so I figured I’d embarrass them a little bit.

While most of you were still asleep this morning, knowing that today’s matches had been canceled, the Lunachicks were dragging themselves out of bed to get on their way to a 9AM match in Greensboro. Since Greensboro has a set of artificial turf fields, they moved a number of Classic matches out of Bryan Park to the turf fields.

So at 9AM, with steady rain falling and temperatures hovering around 36 degrees, the Lunachicks took the field to play 96 Greensboro Gold. Despite the conditions, they played extremely hard, on a surface they’d never played on before. By the 2nd half, the light rain had become heavier, and the girls played on, determined to get a point. For 57 minutes, they held Greensboro scoreless, with both teams having solid chances, but nobody able to put the ball in the net. Greensboro finally managed to score with three minutes left, and the Lunachicks went home, freezing cold, soaked to the bone, and begging the car heater to warm up faster. Regardless of the score, this group of girls braved miserable conditions and played some hard fought soccer – something they should be extremely proud of.

Your coach is extremely proud of you ladies!

Coach Mike

We’re halfway through our regular season, and I’ve seen a LOT of improvement. You’ve finally proven to yourselves that you can play at this level. We still have a lot of work to do, but you should be very proud of the effort you’ve put in these past few weeks.

Since we won’t be able to attend the FVAA Presidential Classic this year, we’ve been able to setup a friendly with 96 TFC White in Apex at 1:30PM. Wear your BLUE uniforms and bring your Yellow. As I get more information about the location, I’ll email and post it here.

It’ll be great to finally get the team back on the field to play a match!

Go LUNACHICKS!

Our official schedule has been released and can be found on the NCYSA Classic Website. The matches have also been entered into our Google calendar along with locations and directions. We’ll do our best to keep them in sync, but the NCYSA calendar is the authoritative schedule.

Standings and official results will appear on this page as well as we play our matches.

I’ve updated the Google Calendar with field locations for the away games and one slight time change (a game shifted 30 minutes)

Also – no friendlies this weekend (Jan 31st) given the number of players who cannot make it. Still working to setup matches for Feb 7th and/or 8th.

GO LUNACHICKS!

The girls kicked off their Spring 2009 season with an excellent practice. One key thing the coaches are pushing this season is intensity and effort in practice. The girls were too complacent last season in practice and it showed in many of their matches. So we’re pushing them harder and trying to get them fired up about the upcoming season so they work harder. Even with temps in the 50’s, all the girls were sweaty and tired by the end of practice – which wasn’t too common last season. Here’s hoping this continues going forward.

In the craziness of last year, I never got a chance to send this out. The league has warmup suits available for purchase if you’d like to get one for your daughter. They’re royal blue with white trim and the MYSA logo embroidered on the jacket. They cost $55. If you want their name embroidered it’s an additional $4.

I’ll have some of them at the fields tonight if you want them to try them on first or see what they look like. The next league order goes in January 19th, so if you want a warmup, give your payment to Leslie by Jan 18th with sizing/embroidery info and she’ll turn it all over to the league for processing. Note you can order them after the 18th, but if you order before, you probably will get it before our preseason tournament (not guaranteed – but likely)

This is 100% optional – just passing the information on for those that are interested in getting them, but I certainly don’t expect the entire team to have them.

Hopefully everyone is enjoying the hustle and bustle before the holidays! We’re hard at work on our Spring schedule and will have some updates on that soon. Since our playing season will begin February 7th, we’re going to be starting practice a bit earlier than normal. Starting the week of January 5th, our practice schedule for January will be as follows:

• Mondays 6:30-8 Field MSC-4D
• Thursdays 6:30-8 Field MSC-4D
• Saturdays 10:30-12 Field MSC-4D

We understand many of the girls have winter sports/activities like basketball and absolutely expect them to make those their top priority early in our season. Just try to make all the practices you can without impacting your winter activity.

Our season will get underway at the FVAA Presidential Classic February 7th and 8th in Fuquay-Varina/Raleigh. Then it looks like we’ll start our regular season play February 14th, though that is still being worked out. We should have our official schedule after January 10th.

The coaching staff are also working on filling in our season with other activities. Some possibilities include:

• Some friendlies in January and possibly in April if we have dates available.
• Beat The Heat Tournament – April 25/26 in Winston-Salem
• Seaside Classic Tournament – May 16/17 in Wilmington – BEACH TRIP!
• One or two girls clinics. The first was a huge success, and we’d like to try and hold one or two of these clinics again, maybe in combination with a friendly match or something. Still working on this.
• I think we need to take the girls to play paintball. If your insurance is paid up! But in all seriousness, it might be neat to do a fun non-soccer activity as a team sometime this season
• End of season pool party

We’re always open for suggestions! Again, the above are just ideas at this point. We may only do one of the post season tournaments or we may do both. Depends on what you all are up for.

That’s it for now.

GO LUNACHICKS!

HUGE CONGRATULATIONS TO COACH MIKE!!!  The North Carolina Youth Soccer Association awarded him Girls’ Challenge Coach of the Year for 2008!  The girls delivered the news last night at our local Blue Ribbon Diner and he was VERY surprised!

The Lunachicks and the ‘Fringe’ had a great evening celebrating with Coach Mike!!  We are privileged and honored to have our ENTIRE coaching staff and to be a part of the Lunachick family.  Of course, the folks at Blue Ribbon were probably VERY glad to see us leave, but we surely made our own brand of Lunachick fun while we were there

Also celebrating with us were many MYSA league officials, Board Members, MYSA Director of Coaching, friends, past players, and past parents from previous teams that Coach Mike had been a part of.  Thanks to ALL for coming out and making this a very special evening!

Hope to see as many of the girls and the Fringe as we can get on Sunday, December 7th at Blue Ribbon!  Time is 4:00.  Remember to let Leslie know if you are coming so that we can prepare the wait staff for the invasion!!!  This will be a short and low key get together for the team, but also a very special one for all of us!!!  A surprise ending to a surprising season!  Promise – no pillows…GO LUNACHICKS!!!

Hopefully everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving and enjoyed their vacations! I appreciate everyone taking the time to read yet another epic Coach Mike email during this busy time and getting back to us over the holiday weekend.

With the agreement of all 14 Lunachick families, the Lunachicks will be moving up to Classic this Spring. I’ve informed the league of the team’s decision and am processing the necessary paperwork to make it official. Congratulations ladies! We’ll now be known as the ‘96 MYSA Lunachicks G

I’ll send more administrative details later this month as there is some paperwork we’ll need from each family.

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season! As I noted before – official practices won’t begin until sometime in January, but we may have a few informal pickup matches before then if the girls are getting stir crazy, especially after Christmas.

GO LUNACHICKS!

UPDATE: It’s official – Here’s our team page on the NCYSA Classic Website.

As luck would have it, we’ll be playing our last tournament in unseasonably cold weather! For us to have seen snow on a November morning is rare indeed and while snow is not expected tomorrow, frost is, which may delay the schedule some Saturday morning.

With temps not expected to get above freezing tomorrow morning until after 10AM, it will be cold for our first match. The girls absolutely should wear Under Armour, leggings if they have them, knit hats and knit gloves. The gloves are the one kicker – making it very hard to throw a ball, so the best kind of gloves have leather surfaces on the fingers. The hats/gloves cannot have ANY type of plastic or metal. The cloth covered ear muffs that are popular these days MAY be allowed at the discretion of the referee. Any extra clothing they want to wear on the field, MUST be worn under their soccer uniform! The girls should bring a HEAVY coat that zips/snaps that they can wear on the bench. If anyone has beat up heavy blankets the girls can use on the bench, that would be great.

Leslie and I will keep everyone updated regarding any delays. Please make sure Leslie has your latest contact information if it is not correct in your parent portal account on the MYSA Website. Click Your Profile to check it.

The current schedule and directions to Bryan Park can be found in the original GYS Clash post. Here is some other useful information:

• GYS Challenge Clash Website
• U12 Girls Blue Schedule and Results
• Current Bryan Park Weather

Even though it’ll be very cold, I’m looking forward to the Lunachicks showing off what they’ve learned this season and hopefully bringing some of the confidence they gained last weekend in Charlotte.

GO LUNACHICKS!