Category: Holly

The Lady Cubs are rapidly improving their volleyball skills, and have won a couple of games, but have yet to win a match. In Monday’s matchup against the Coble Coyotes, the entire team did well in the very close first game, and continued to impress in the second game, even though they had some tough breaks and allowed the Coyotes to take a huge lead early. The fact they never gave up, and continued doing their best even when they were down, was great to see.

Also great to see was Holly’s individual performance. She’s really learning to use her height and jumping ability to great advantage. She had some legitimate kills and a couple of stuffs. Here’s an excerpt from the Coach’s report on the match:

The A-Team fought but couldn’t come up with enough to overcome the Coyotes (22-25, 13-25).  Outstanding Player of the Game was Holly Armstrong.

Holly’s 7th grade Art class had a discussion on Aboriginal art and Holly mentioned that her family happened to have “a few boomerangs”. The teacher wanted to see some, so the next day, Holly took a few to school. With all the questions of “Do they really come back?”, the whole class soon ended up out on the football field with Holly giving an impromptu demonstration. Luckily, she had also taken a lightweight Carlotta to show how more “modern” paintjobs contrast to the Aboriginal. So she had something easy to throw to start with. After she threw and caught the Carlotta, the teacher and other kids wanted to see one of the bigger boomerangs in action. Though Holly had never thrown anything so large, she made a go of it and got some good returns. The class was very impressed and now know that yes, they really do come back. The teacher sent me this photo of Holly holding some boomerangs in front of some of the class’s aboriginal art.

Holly felt good about her chances all throughout Volleyball team tryouts, and just watching her play around with the ball (and actually doing some bumping and setting with her) I felt good about her chances too. I’ve got to admit though, that I was a little worried about how she would take it if she turned out not to make the team. It turns out no worrying was needed. She made the A-Team! Some of her close friends (Taylor, Lulu, Amanda, Kelsey, Karolyn) also made the team, so this ought to be a fun season.

Holly decided she wants to play volleyball at school, so we signed her up for a volleyball camp (actually a “day camp”) to see if she really liked it. She does. Her and her friend Taylor attended the camp and had tons of fun and learned tons of stuff. We’ll see if this pays off when team tryouts come around after school starts.

At the beginning of this soccer season, Coach Shan told the team that this would be the last time he coached. The team complained strongly, begging him to come back again. He thought he was in the clear when he told them he would agree to come back only if they went undefeated this season. So of course they did it!

This was the Waxahachie YMCA U13 Coed Soccer league. Last season was also a coed league, but our girls were a strong enough team to compete against teams of both boys and girls. This season, we brought in 4 brothers to make up an 11-a-side team. This included one of the girls’ twin, and her other, younger set of identical twin brothers. This was also our first league on a full-size field, so running was strongly stressed in the twice-weekly practices.

Holly continued to improve and scored some goals on offense, but it became evident that she was most valuable to the team on defense. Her and the other tenacious defenders were sometimes so effective that they gave our goalie a half where she never even needed to touch the ball.

The end-of-season party was at Pizza Hut where trophies and team photos were handed out, and where Coach Shan assured the team that he would be true to his word and coach them again in this Fall’s U14 league.

Click here for the full photo album.

The Strikers soccer team celebrated their season with a pizza dinner at Double Dave’s. Afterwards, they were presented their trophies. They also played games and pumped quarters into a gumball-type machine to collect plastic rings. (If only older females were satisfied by such cheap jewelry!)

In a tight defensive game, Holly scored the Strikers’ only goal in regulation. It looked like it would be the second game-winner for her in as many weeks, but the opposition scored late in the game to tie it up 1-to-1. Though we’ve had tie games before in the YMCA leagues, this was the first time we’ve had a game decided by a shootout. Colette was The Strikers’ goalie for the shootout and she stopped all five kicks. Three Strikers’ kicks were stopped before Lulu finally put one in. So the coach’s daughter scored the winning goal, thus avoiding weeks of being grounded. 🙂

Holly’s soccer team started a new season a few weeks ago, and so far they’ve had it tough, with one tie and three losses. For the first time, they are playing in a co-ed league, so even though Holly’s team is still all girls, they’re playing against boys. This may have intimidated a few of the Strikers at first, but not anymore. This Saturday there was a double-header. Our girls came close in the first game, but lost 4-2. The second game was an incredible defensive struggle, but the Strikers came out on top, 1-0. Though Holly scored the loan goal, it was definitely an excellent team effort and all the girls deserve lots of credit. Go Strikers!