I don't have any awesome photos like
@Technician72 or
@socalkdg, but my brag today is that this past weekend, my DD put in a performance that "won" the game for her team.
As we all know, keepers don't win games, they save them. It's a frustrating existence because often our kids' best performances come in games where their team is hopelessly outmatched (like Tim Howard vs. Belgium a few years ago). This results in lots of games where although our little keepers stood on their heads and covered themselves in glory, the team still loses, often quite badly. Until my DD got on her current team, that seemed to be about 75% of her entire youth career. On the other side of that coin, when the team your kid is on is great, often our kids are picking daisies or counting blades of grass while the rest of the squad is launching shots and celebrating goals. The worst is when the team plays well in a tight game, but our kids get beat on that one play that decides the game. This reality means that most of the time, the GK family ride home from games involve some sort of unhappiness or frustration. "I played great, but we got destroyed." or "My team did great, but I didn't do anything!" or "I let my team down when they needed me!" It's rare when all the planets align and your kid has to play lights out in tight game AND the team is good enough to get the W. That happened this weekend for my DD and man, was it sweet.
Very competitive game where the momentum went back and forth, the other team probably out shot us, but the kid came up big, making one stop in particular from point blank range that gave her team a huge boost, and they went on to score the deciding goal shortly afterwards. Maybe it's just my experience, but these games are so rare for our keeper. Gonna revel in this one all week long.