United Cup of Champions

Rylan had his first travel soccer tournament this past weekend.  He's playing with NUSA and is in the U11 division.  The boys have been practicing since the beginning of August but were only allowed to start scrimmaging in the last few weeks due to Covid restrictions.  There are enough kids for 3 teams at this age group.  The teams are maroon, navy, and gold and Rylan is on the gold team.  Though maroon is supposed to be the strongest team and gold the weakest, that doesn't seem to be the case right now.  It was hard to initially evaluate the kids due to no scrimmaging and then I believe they are not moving kids between teams right now due to Covid (makes contract tracing a lot easier!).  The weekend before the tournament, the U11 & U12 teams had internal friendly games.  Rylan's U11 Gold team played the U11 Navy team and won 7-1.  Then Rylan's U11 Gold team played the U12 Gold team and tied 7-7.  He has a strong team (of mostly kids new to NUSA) with AMAZING defense and a great goalie for this age.

For the tournament, Rylan's team was guaranteed three games over the weekend.  Then the top two of the four in their group (U11 Boys Silver) would play one another to determine the champion.  Carter also had a baseball tournament last weekend (in Murfreesboro while Rylan's tournament was in Hendersonville), so I missed two of Rylan's games but Brian texted me constant updates.

Rylan's first games was Friday night against the NUSA Navy team again.  Rylan's team won 6-2 with Rylan scoring 2 goals!  He played again Saturday evening and his team won 5-1 with Rylan scoring 2 more goals.  I got to see that game!

One of the boys that Rylan played with forever at the Y (Mac B) is on his current team.

Rylan's third game was Sunday morning.  His team won that one 9-0 with Rylan scoring 2 more goals.  With that win they placed 1st in their group and played the same team they played on Saturday night.

Rylan's team did it again and won that game 4-0 (Rylan "only" scored one goal that game).

Champions!!!

L to R: Arlan, Max, Louie, Maddox, Gavin, Reeves, Caleb, Mason, Rylan, Noah, Mac, Grant, Patton, and Alexander.

Rylan is so proud of his medal!  It's barely left his sight since his team won it :)  Rylan is LOVING his team right now, and we are so happy he's enjoying it!