Last Fall Game - McGilvra Blue Angels

It was a great end to a great season! All nine Pirate Pixies were present, and all of them played wonderfully! It's been a pleasure to be a part of the team this season. I hope everyone had as much fun as we did.
I'm already looking forward to spring soccer - I hope that everyone can join us again. Hopefully the spring games won't be so far north next year.

Stay tuned for details on the Pirate Pixies Fall Slideshow Party coming soon!

Ben

Saturday

From: Karin Hirschfeld
Date: Oct 25, 2007 8:28 PM
Subject: [Pirate Pixies] Saturday

Hi friends –

Our last game is this Saturday at 10:45 (Garfield West). Please be
there by 10:30 for warm-ups. Right after the game is our end of the
season party at Piecora's New York Pizza (1401 E. Madison). We have
the back room booked for the Pixies from 12 – 1:30. This will be our
time to eat pizza, salad and celebrate our gals. I have ordered pizza
& salad for the 34 (!) people who have said they are coming – that
will run about $8-9 a person.

PLEASE BRING SHOES FOR ANY PERSON WHO IS WEARING CLEATS – they have a
no-cleat policy.

Thanks – see you Saturday!
Karin

Game Seven - Capitol Hill Magic

The Pixies had their "argh factor" back on Saturday for a very good game against a very good team. It was cold, wet, and muddy, but the girls played hard!

UW Husky women's soccer October 28

Hi Pirate Pixie Parents,
We've been able to get free tickets for the girls to see the
Husky women's team play at 'WSYSA Day at Husky Soccer' on Sunday
October 28th at 12PM, and we would like to be able to take the team to
see the big girls play. If your pirate pixie can make it, please let
me know. If parents and siblings can come too that is great. We can
get $3 tickets in advance for adults and siblings.
If you can let me know by the game on Saturday if your pixie can
go and if anyone else from your family can, I will get the additional
tickets for parents/siblings on Saturday afternoon. Mari's family has
confirmed and if another parent or two can go, we can probably have a
nice carpool..

See you at practice today! Pirates love stormy weather!

Ben

Game Six - Badgers

A tough game for the Pixies , against our field mates the Badgers. Nevertheless, there were some excellent plays made by all the girls.

Game Five - Capitol Hill Panthers

The Pirate Pixies played excellently today!! All the girls did very well against another good team.

Game four - McGilvra Panthers

It was another great game for the Pirate Pixies against the talented McGilvra Panthers. Our girls played wonderfully. There was more passing than ever before, and some true heroics on the part of our keepers. Not to mention several goals.

Here's the link to the article on girls' knee injuries that Karin mentioned last week.

See you all at practice this week!

Ben

game 9/29

Hi there –

The Pixies continue to play well together and improve their skills. They are such a pleasure to watch now – lots of passing and artful ball maneuvering. Wow!
Our game this Saturday is at Garfield (East) at 1 pm. Please be there at 12:40. Thank you to Mackenzie’s family for bringing snacks. I’ll have oranges for half-time.

October

Anne Gienapp (Mari’s mom) has been taping the US team in the World Cup and has invited interested Pixies to come over to their house after the game on 10/6 for a bite to eat and a chance to watch some extraordinary Women’s soccer. Their house is very close to Dearborn. Details later.

Our last game is 10/27 and we have reserved a backroom at Piecora’s pizza for our end of season goodbye. Our game that day is at 10:45 at Garfield. Our reservation is for 12 noon. We’ll need to collect money for food and trophies in a few weeks.

Injury Prevention

Finally, you may have seen the article in last Sunday’s paper about girls and soccer injuries. There has been quite a bit of research of late focused on why girls are tearing up their knees at a younger age and higher rate than boys. This is particularly true of ACL tears. At least two of the Pixies’ moms tore up their knees early in their careers (I was 13) and I am conscious about developing good habits with the Pixies. What this means is becoming conscious about not locking or hyper-extending their knees when they run, stop and turn and building up their quads and hamstring muscles. (This is why we are frequently running backwards!) Lunges, squats, jumproping are all great at building the muscles around the knee to help prevent injuries.
Thanks for all your work getting kids to practice and games. I know it is a juggling act. Thank you for your Pixie and contribution to our wonderful crew of girls.
See you Saturday,
Karin

Game 3

After photos at Lakewood, the Pirate Pixies had a great game playing against the Kick'n KitKats from Beacon Hill on Saturday. All the girls are really doing great!

Photo forms at practice today

Hi Pirate Pixie Parents,
    I was very proud of our girls and how well they played on Saturday. As Karin mentioned, our game this Saturday is at 2:30PM at Dearborn Park, and our photo appointment is at 1:30PM at Lakewood Playfield (just north of PCC on 50th) We hope that everyone will be able to make it for the photo. Let Karin or I know if you need help getting your pirate pixie to the photos or to the game afterwards - we can help.

I have photo order forms and will try to give them to everyone tonight at practice.

regards,
Ben

Team Photos 22 Sept at Lakewood field

The Pixies played another great game on Saturday against a strong team. We’re seeing a lot more passing and working together.

We have pictures this Saturday an hour before our game. Their pictures will be taken at Lakewood field (not the community center like last year) at 1:30 pm. Please be there on time so that we can get to our game (2:30) at Dearborn Park. Ben will have the forms at practice this week. Let us know if you have any questions. If you need help getting your Pixies to pictures and/or the game let us know. We can help.

Thanks for all your support!

Karin

Dolphins - Game 2

The Pirate Pixies played a great game today against the McGilvra Dolphins, who we recalled from last fall, are a very intense team! A lot of us on the sidelines certainly felt the intensity! All the girls played great, with many goals, fast setups and some great saves. See you all at practice this week!

First Game against the Beacon Hill Unicorns

The Pirate Pixies had their first fall game today against the 24 player Beacon Hill Unicorns. The girls played well, scoring many goals and making some really great plays. Thanks to Anne for a great snack!

First game on Saturday September 8th

Hi there –

Happy Friday. We had all our Pixies at practice yesterday! They are older, more coordinated and full of the ‘argh’ factor*. It will be a great season!

Our first game is tomorrow (11:30 am at Garfield East). Please be at the field by 11:15 for warm-ups. I know Mari’s family will be out of town. Let us know if anyone else can’t make it. Ben has the complicated job of creating the play/sub schedule, so it’s important to know if any pixies can’t be there.

Thank you to Alice’s family for bringing snack!

See you soon,

Karin

First Fall Practice

First Fall practice on a muggy day at Dearborn Park! Go Pirate Pixies!

Goals Installed

Anne, Mari, Savita and I helped set up the goals at our field at Dearborn Park on Friday. Mari and Savita performed a little Quality Assurance Testing on them, and they appear to work well!
The game schedule is being finalized this weekend, and will be posted here as soon as it's made available. It looks like all our games will be on Saturdays either at Dearborn Park or at Garfield.

We are looking forward to seeing everyone on Tuesday at 5:30PM. I will bring medical release forms for everyone to sign, and would like to confirm addresses and emergency contact information, so please see me before you leave.

More Soccer!

Hi Friends,
    I want to echo what Karin said - I too am very excited for the fall season, and wanted to mention a few things:

1. I will continue to post game and practice information on the Pirate Pixie blog ( http://piratepixies.blogspot.com) as soon as we have the schedule.

2. I went to the coaches meeting last week, and as I'm sure you all know, one of the risks of going to meetings of volunteer-run organizations is ending up with more volunteer duties.. In that spirit, I've become responsible for setting up and maintaining the goals at Dearborn Park, where our games and practices will be. I'm meeting the previous keeper of goals there on Friday, August 31 from 6:30 - 8:00PM to get the fields marked and goals assembled, and he advises that it would be useful to have two other people there for this initial setup. If you happen to be available and willing to help with this, please let me know!

3. The Mt Baker/Lakewood soccer club is trying out the use of International Soccer Schools' "Rec Assist" program this year. This is a program where the ISS professional coaches come to one of your team's practices each week and work with the existing parent coaches and players. You can see some information about it here:
 http://www.intlsoccerschools.com/teamclubcoaching.html
The Capitol Hill club began using them for their older teams a few years ago, and now uses them for all teams, starting at U-6. I knew there was something about that team in black from Capitol Hill that humbled us this spring!!
There is an additional cost to teams that choose to do this. Their fee is $480 per season, and our club would subsidize 50% (or possibly more if needed) of the cost. For a team our size it would come out to roughly $25 per player.
Many of the older teams in our club are already scheduled to use them this season.  Karin and I wanted to mention this for everyone to think about, if not for this year, then perhaps next. My personal opinion after talking to some of their coaches, is that it is a very cheap way(particularly with the club subsidy) to get some pretty high quality training. Please let Karin or I know if you have opinions about this..

See you in a couple weeks!

Ben
benawilson@gmail.com
206-890-2588

PS this was sent using the mailing list piratepixies@googlegroups.com - send to this address if you want to reach everyone on the team. It is currently set so that by default, replies will only go to the author of the original mail.

Soccer ! (from Karin)

Hi friends –

I wanted to let you know what we have just learned about the soccer schedule for the fall. It looks like practices will be at Dearborn Park from 5:30 – 6:30 on Tuesdays & Thursdays. Games will be there too, on Saturdays. Our games will begin on Saturday, September 8^th. We haven’t been told the time yet – I’ll let you know as soon as we’re told.

Our first practice will be Tuesday, September 3^rd. All the Pirate Pixies are returning (isn’t that incredible!!!) and we welcome one new player, Mackenzie.

We need to make sure we have the medical and contact forms updated with current cell phones and emergency numbers.

Ben and I are looking forward to getting the team back together and having a lot of fun in the upcoming months. Let us know if you have any questions.

See you soon!

Karin

Seattle Sounders Womens Team final home game

This Thursday the 19th is the final Sounders Women's team home game of the season at Starfire stadium in Tukwila. We went to a game there a couple of weeks ago, and really enjoyed it. It is a big new facility with lots of fields. The crowd was filled with families and girls' soccer teams. When the game finished, they all went on to the field to meet and talk with the players, which was a lot of fun for our girls.
Tickets are available at the gate or in advance and are $7 for adults, $4 for kids. More information is here:
http://www.starfiresports.com/main_addedpages/sounderswomen.asp
There is a pizza place in the complex that was pretty good too - we will probably be there between 6 or 6:15pm if anyone is interested in meeting up before the game.

Pirate Pixie Photo Pizza Party

Come see the slideshow from the Pirate Pixies 2007 Spring season! Monday, July 16th at 6:30PM. Email Ben (benawilson@gmail.com) for directions.

Last Spring Game!

The last game was great! The Pixies played like never before, passing and controlling the ball excellently. Though I won't miss the drive to Shoreline, I will miss the soccer. It's been a joy to help coach these girls.
We are already looking forward to the fall season. All eight original Pirate Pixies are signed up for the fall team, so it promises to be an excellent season.
If anyone else is interested, we might have some informal practices this summer. Plus it might be fun to take a Pirate Pixie group to see a Sounders Women's game...

A Hot Day in June

It was a hot day, playing against the Iridescent Sparkles. Everyone played well, and there were no complaints about the heat, but oranges had to be eaten in the shade! Next week is the last Spring game, 1PM... Hope to see you all there!