Kicking around some soccer balls and a fresh covering of snow

Our world presently has a white covering of snow. Maybe it will last—but don’t bet on it. The ground is frozen which should help the situation.

The snow has also brought a few birds to the feeder—two more turkeys came this morning.

I had a Northern Shrike around the feeder on Sunday but I didn’t see it catch anything.

We traveled to our daughter Erin’s home in Livonia for Thanksgiving dinner. It was great with the whole family together.

Before dinner, grandson Jacob took me to the Swamp Inlet of Conesus Lake—a neat place where there is a pair of nesting Bald Eagles.

When we got out of the car one of the adult Eagles was perched in a tree in the middle of the swamp while the other adult circled overhead.

Several mallard and black ducks came in and the Eagle flew off.

There were several buck rubs on the shrubs along the path so there were deer in the area for sure.

We went down by the dam which controls the swamp where walleyes run up during the spring spawning season.

There was a Cardinal in the bushes and a Northern Shrike hunting along the dam.

After it left I heard a Kingfisher and a Red-tailed Hawk calling out in the swamp.

Then I called in some little birds, four Chickadees and two Golden Crowned Kinglets.

The Kinglets got close enough that we could see the pretty stripe on their heads.

The weekend before we spent a beautiful two days in Middletown down near the Pennsylvania border. We went to watch the boys’ high school soccer championships.

Grandson Jacob’s Livonia team, rated the number one B school in the state with a record of 20-0-1, played.

The team had outscored other teams 90 to 5 going into the play-offs.On the way to the championships, their first play-off game was against Greece Odyssey.

It was played in Honeoye Falls and ended in a 0 to 0 tie.

Livonia ended up winning 5 to 4 in a shoot out.

The next game that took them to the finals was against East Aurora in Hamburg which they won 3 to 2.

The score stayed the same for the last 18 minutes of the game—a real nail biter.

We were now at the finals and the teams were pretty well matched up.

We watched a lot of other games as there were adjoining fields at Middletown High School.

Locally, Poland Central School was defeated Saturday 1 to 0 by Chazy.

Chazy was the eventual Class D winner, defeating Fort Ann 4 to 0 on Sunday. It was their sixth championship since 2004.

On the other field on Sunday was the Class AA finals between Brentwood and Arlington.

Brentwood, ranked number two in the country, was defeated 2 to 1 in a barn burner of a game.

The Arlington goalie was shell-shocked for the last ten minutes of the game, but he saved everything that came at him. What a game.

Back to Livonia’s games. They played Mattituck from out on Long Island in the first game on Saturday.

It didn’t start out very well as Mattituck scored in the first thirty seconds of the game.

That must have woken up the sleeping giant in Livonia as that was the only score they got that afternoon.

Livonia scored once in the first half and two more in the second half.

I could see why their opponents had only scored 5 goals all season as the defense stiffened and goalie Sean Smith made some fantastic saves.

One was a breakaway where he came out of the goal to cut down the angle and deflected the shot outside the goal.

I was standing next to my daughter Erin at the end of the game and we had a nice hug for each other as she had tears of joy in her eyes.

She had worked with most of these boys and son Jacob when they were younger and just developing their soccer skills.  This meant a lot to her.

Now onto the final game of the championship between Livonia and Ichabod Crane.

The opposing team had a 21-0-1 record going into the game and had outscored their opponents 72 to 7, so these teams were evenly matched.

The sunset over the field during the first half as each team made trips up and down the field with no score.

The second half went about the same way with just a few shots on goal but no score at the end of regulation.

Then came sudden death overtime with two 15-minute periods.

During the second overtime Ichabod Crane put one over the cross bar and it hit the football goal post just behind and came back in play where it was headed into the net.

It was the only ball in the net for the whole game, but was ruled out of bounds.

So the game ended in a 0 to 0 tie.

It was and a well deserved co-championship for both teams who played their hearts out for 110 minutes.

Tracking snow in the morning, but that’s another story. See ya.