The Tacoma Tide’s all-time leading scorer, Rory Agu, lives a soccer filled life. So what does he do when he’s not shooting the ball on the field? Throughout the season, we’ll get a behind the scenes look at the Tacoma Tide, PDL soccer, and life in general through the Tide’s #10.
Tacoma Tide FC @ Kitsap Pumas May 15, 2009
Last night was not what I wanted but I guess we can settle for a point…
… Game time: Everyone has their uniforms on, ready to go. We walk out of the locker room to line up. I’m in the front with their captain Steve Mohn (formerly a Tacoma Tide player). They had some bag pipe players leading the way. So we’re following these bag pipe players to the field and out of nowhere in the middle of the field the bag pipe players stopped walking, so Mohn and I just looked at each other and decided to go around the bag pipe players to make it look like we knew what we were doing. We lined up and realized that the referees weren’t with us, so everyone had to move down and make room for the refs. Then we did the national anthem, there was a 4th grade girl that came out to sing it. I felt a little bad because her voice was crackling and popping and toward the end of the anthem she missed a line. I looked up into the stands to see if anyone had noticed, and for some reason I found some lady laughing at this little girl who was trying her best to sing the national anthem.
We did the coin toss, and of course I won, so Jordan Jennings picked the side he wanted to play on first. Our starting line up for defense was Adam West, Daniel Pularmo, tucker Maxwell, and a Eric Orozco. In the mid-field we had Chase Tagney, Nick Bazono, Ruben Orozco, and Greg House (player/coach). Up top we had Machael David and myself, and in goal was Jordan Jennings. We started the game off a little slow, our passing wasn’t really that great, a little hesitant. They started the game off playing kick ball, and all they had were big tall guys that could head the ball. It was a little weird because the average height on our team is around 5’8” and the average height on their team is around 6’ or 6’2.” Of course every dangerous play they had come from a long ball, throw in, or a set piece where they tried to find a player’s head, because they were all bigger than us.
Unexpectedly the way they scored was not off of a header or a flick, but one of our player’s trying to pass it in our defensive third. It just so happened that the player to score that goal at around the 25th minute was a player that I had played with for the last three years, Spencer Schomaker. For the next 20 minutes or so that game was evenly played. In the first half Machael David received a yellow card for diving in the penalty area. We went in for half-time and coach made a few changes to bring in some fresh legs. We started off the second half pressuring them and forcing them to make a lot of mistakes in their defensive end. We finally started connecting passes and getting shots off and eventually it paid off. Around the 75th minute I went down the right side of the field and crossed a square ball toward the goal, where their goalie dropped the ball in between his legs and Machael David was there to clean it up. I read other articles today about the game and they said Machael David put in a deflection, the thing is the ball went through the keeper’s hands and legs (technically a nutmeg). From there on it became an even game again, going back and forth, their chances, our chances and that was pretty much the game, a tie 1-1. Something that I am never satisfied with, being that I am a competitive person. I hate tying and now we leave the fate of our U.S. Open cup hopes in the hands of other teams. After the game I talked to some of the past Tacoma Tide players that now play for the other team. They were mad because they didn’t win, which meant they didn’t get their $100 bonus, but it’s ok because I told them before the game that they wouldn’t get their money on my watch. I went home, got something to eat, tried to go to sleep but kept waking up in the middle of the night, kept thinking about the game, and thinking about what I was going to write. I felt a little sore, decided to go to MVP and go in the hot tub and dwell and recover from last night and prepare for the home opener tomorrow. Like my good friend Will Farrell says, goodnight and stay classy Tacoma.
-Rory Agu #10
