FC DENVER TRYOUTS

Sunday was the first day of tryouts for the Football Club of Denver (FC Denver). FC Denver is a non profit, competitive, adult soccer club. Currently we have 4 men's teams and 2 women's teams. I serve as a player and coach for our premier team. I'm also a director so i handle a great deal of administrative tasks for the club. For example, the night before tryouts i drafted several contracts for the players dealing with liability, codes of conduct, and commitment to club. I've also drafted by laws and letters for the club. I also serve as somewhat of a coaching director. Mainly i just make sure there is a standard of coaching for the club, and help the coaches design training.

This weekend was our first tryouts for the fall season. We had about 30 new players turn out, which is pretty exciting. Most of the players were recreational level players, but we have teams that will suit their abilities. A few premier players showed up to tryouts and we went off to side to work on fitness. We did a long warm up to get some of the rust off, stretched, did a little more agility based warm ups, then headed off to do sprints. We did 6 back to back 100 yard sprints, and 6 back to back 50 yard sprints. Its pretty tough when you don't give the guys a lot of time to recover. After that we did a drill to work on explosiveness, and finished off with a cool down and stretch. Needless to say i was exhausted after. I think a combination of the heat, elevation, being way out of shape, and not having a good enough breakfast came together to wreck me.

The guys seemed pretty satisfied with the running, but little do they know that it was just the beginning. i have far more sinister drills in my repertoire that i have yet to unveil. i figured it wasn't a good idea to scare them away on the first day so i'll leave that for next time.

After seeing some of the guys on the premier team, i think we need to up the level of quality on that squad. Most of the guys are excellent players, but I would love to bring in players of a slightly higher caliber in a few positions. We need players with some type of college or professional experience, who might not be physically or technically superior to guys we have but are smarter. We might be a little naive for the level we are trying to play at this next season. We have enough heart to get good results, but I'm questioning our ability to manage games properly. So that is my task for the upcoming season. I need to find a way to get us up to par tactically and mentally, as well as physically.

Personally i need to get in shape, otherwise i might be out of starting job as well. It takes me about a month to acclimated to the elevation, which isn't good cause that will only leave me a week or two to do some hard training before the season starts.

Ok that is enough about that. I'm working on getting a digital camera, because the whole disposable camera thing really isn't working for me. So hopefully soon i'll have more pictures.

Things to look forward to this week: Law school orientation, Gaby gets her ultrasound and we find out if it is a boy or a girl, i return to jiu jitsu training after a long lay off do to illness, and i finally get to move off the sofa and move into an actual room!!!!!!