It was for the other team, but I scored a goal today. We played against San Ramon today who has a very good team. (I still don't know why they call their church/team San Ramon. Their first church was in Castro Valley and their new church is in Pleasanton.) I got caught in a bad situation. I had a man in front of me with the ball in scoring position and another man to my left. My fellow defender had fallen down just a second ago trying to clear the ball but the offense managed to maintain control. I didn't know what to do so I played in between both players like I would in basketball till the man with the ball commits to shoot or pass. He went for the shot and I tried to move my body into the path of the ball to deflect it from going in the goal.  The ball caught my left hip but I didn't manage to deflect it enough and it went into the goal. I ended up making it harder for our goalie to protect the goal by deflecting it. In hindsight, I should have charged the man with the ball to cut off the angle for him to shoot. If I stayed up close to him, he wouldn't have been able to get a shot off. The player to my left was at a much worse angle to shoot and even if he had a free shot, he probably would have missed. Oh well, I will do better next time.

I am extremely proud of our team. We were down 1-0 on the goal that I scored but the team never hung their heads. They came back and scored 3 more goals. The other team was yelling at the referee, yelling at each other, and there was some overly physical play. Despite all this, our team remained true to our original goal. We play in the name of our church and represent St. Anthony the father or monasticism. We are called the Monks and we played like Monks. There were some calls that our team could have argued but didn't. They all kept their heads up played with class and true Christian love. I couldn't be more proud of this team. I am sure that Anba Antonius watched the game with a huge smile on his face. GO MONKS!!!

I only played about 3 minutes and for some reason I started which is fine with me. I know I don't have any talent and can't play this game and the team plays much better without me. But I am glad that I chose to ride my back to the park. It's about 8 or 9 miles away from my house and having not played much, I needed the exercise. I'm especially proud that I managed to make it all the way back home without stopping and keeping up a decent pace despite it being up hill most of the way. Earlier in the week I road up the steep trail that goes up the hill behind Diablo Vista park. I nearly passed out doing it but I managed to get all the way up to the top. I'm going to try to ride at least 3 times a week until it starts getting cold this fall.