Not Just the Professionals are Ballin...

Yeah, ya seen the picture. I'm a baller. Officially. Last weekend I played in the Nagano JET soccer tournament and here's the picture of our 3rd-place-not-too-shabby-for-having-no-subs-team. It was sweltering heat sprinkled with raindrops every now and then plus lots of fun times. We played four games on Saturday with a 2-1-1 record and then 3 on Saturday, finishing 3rd. All in all, I had a blast, especially considering for the past decade I have played a sport which only uses hands.



And, not only do we have an amazing team of girls, we also have an awesome coach AND... cheerleaders! They sported our uniform and rocked the pom poms and when I was dead tired it really made a difference. It was nice to know someone was there supporting us! So, here's Atsushi in the pic, one of our cheerleaders. He's awesome, and Saturday night at the JET party he had another team (made up of cute foreign girls) dancing the night away with him. Hilarious.



Finally, our beloved trophy. I will admit it's the size of a soda can, but we won it, it's ours, and we love it. I loved it enough to kiss it, anyway. And, besides the trophy we got a case of beer to celebrate our victory. Not bad, eh?!

Growing up in a soccer family, I always felt the black sheep for picking a different sport. I grew up watching soccer. I LOVE soccer. But, I have never really played. So, look out family. Look out Mundial. A new ballers on the block.