A Night of Soccer

Remember that little guy in 5th grade who just moved here that I was hanging out with at Triple C, Alejandro? Well on Friday night, UVA played Virginia Tech in a soccer game. Alejandro wanted to come, and two of his friends too, so we all went to the game! It was a great night and the boys had so much fun! It was finally something familiar to Alejandro: soccer! He talked and

talked all night about playing soccer where he was from and how much he loves it and watching games, etc. He loved the Cavalier mascot too!

The game was great, with both teams playing in front of a record UVA crowd. UVA's goal is to get 8,000 people to come see a game and that night there were 7,906 people! The game ended in a tie, after two extra time periods. In fact the best play of the game was when the score was 1-1 and they were in the second extra time. VA Tech got a penalty kick and everyone was nervous, thinking that Tech was going to score on the penalty. But the UVA goalie (who is A-MAZING, by the way), dove for the ball and blocked it!!! The Tech players all fell on the ground in despair! And all the UVA fans were going nuts, cheering like crazy maniacs! Alejandro was totally in to it too, jumping up and down and shouting, "GO VIRGINIA!!!" in English!

After the game, the UVA players signed autographs and one of the players let Alejandro come down on the field so he could meet the players personally and get them to sign his game program. No other kids were allowed to come on the field! He thought that was the coolest thing ever and ran around shaking their hands and getting the players to sign his program! I love this picture of the UVA goalie handing the paper back to him. Just look at Alejandro's face in the picture, looking up at the goalie with a big smile.

Of course it takes 7,906 fans a long time to exit the parking lot, so there was traffic for about 25 minutes. Instead of waiting in the car, we played soccer on one of the walkways near the parking lot until the traffic subsided! Of course, to me, the best part of the night was getting to talk for 3 hours in Spanish to the boys. I still have trouble understanding what they are saying, but it's definitely getting better. By the end of the night, I understood more and more. In fact, several times Alejandro said something funny in Spanish that I totally got, and that made it even funnier because I actually understood it! I wish every night could be like that!