SYA Futbol

Toward the end of October, a team of SYA students took on a very formidable team of Viterbese high school kids that play on a team that one of our host fathers coaches.  The host father's name is Johnny.  Great guy who works at Viterbo's police headquarters.  He helped all of the students and the American teachers through the process of getting our work permits, which you need along with our VISAs in order to work here.

Alexia showing good form!

The game is on a Wednesday.  Game time: 5:30-ish (because hardly anything starts on time here).  The venue:   a converted tennis court, across the street from the Porta Fiorentina train station, whose surface can only be described as indoor/outdoor carpeting with a healthy sprinkle of sand to create just enough slide that I'm glad it's them playing and not me (lol)!

Dominic, our goal keeper

The field is O.T.W. (for those of you who forgot, that's Outside The Wall) so it's about a 10-15 minute walk from my apartment.  But now that I have a shiny new red/white mountain bike (thanks Pat Scanlon for helping me get it!) travel time is trimmed down to just 5 minutes.  As I arrive, all of the key SYA players (Akbar, Dominic, Jasper, Will, and Alexia) are warming up with several more in the stands.  This is clearly an SYA-heavy cheering section.  Advantage, SYA!  As it turns out, that was the ONLY advantage we had (lol).  We got our clocks cleaned.  Final score, SYA: 3, Viterbese: 20, more an American football score!

Ben with coach Johnny

Nevertheless, it was great to see the kids outside of the classroom, cheering each other on and having fun!  My hope is that I'll get to play tennis with some of them in the future.  Several of the kids recently started up the SYA Varsity Tennis Team.  I was officially invited to join the team the other day.  What an honor!!