January 2017 - Soccer in Las Vegas & Pierre

February 03, 2018

My parents returned home on the 7th of January and with that we returned to the normal pace of our life here.

As I already mentioned in my post of December 2016 (December 2016), that winter (and with that I meant December and January) was very cold and the amount of snow we had was just incredible!
So after all the skiing and sliding and hiking in the cold, the soccer tournament of Hendrik in Las Vegas, which took place in the middle of January, certainly was a nice intermezzo!

Soccer in Las Vegas

From mid October until the end of March there are no outdoor competition soccer games here in Utah as it is very well possible that within that period there is just no field playable due to snow. During these months they switch to 'Indoor soccer' or 'Futsal'.

What follows are two small intermezzos (paragraphs) on Indoor Soccer and Futsal for layman (like me)... you might want to skip these two if you don't want to hear what the differences are :-)

Indoor soccer is played (inside of course 😬) on a field with turf, enclosed by a perimeter wall. Beside the difference in surface, there are some significant other differences with outdoor soccer: only between 4 and 6 players, the game only takes 2 x 22min, the offside rule doesn't exist, and the wall can be used. The latter definitely brings a whole new element of strategy and tactics to the game and as the ball is hardly ever out out of play due to the wall, the game time is greater and more intensive.

'Futsal' is also played inside, but on a hard court (like a basketball court), with a smaller but heavier (low bounce) ball and it is played 5 vs 5. The field is smaller and there are no walls which leads to many interruptions because the ball leaves the playing area far too often as the boys are not trained and not used to play this game ... I guess it's better than doing nothing, but I cannot say that I enjoyed watching this type of soccer.

This winter Willem did the Indoor soccer and Hendrik did the Futsal.

To give the boys some outdoor practice during these long winter months, they participate to soccer tournaments in warmer places, like Southern Nevada (the state West of Utah).

Hendrik and his team participated to such a tournament in Las Vegas.
His first game was on a Friday and as it is a 6 hour drive 😳 (for a soccer game!! ... that is like his team in Belgium would have a tournament somewhere between Nürnberg and München ... crazy, right?), we had to leave already on Thursday after school. To my surprise the school didn't have a problem with the fact that Hendrik and Willem would have to skip school for this. I didn't even have to provide proof from the club or anything ... just me saying that they would not go to school because of a soccer tournament was enough! When checking out the truancy laws here, it's clear that it's not as strict as back home ... you're allowed to have 3 unexcused absences and 6 excused absences per term (there are 4 terms per school year). And with 'excused', they mean excused by the parents (funeral, illness, medical appointment, family emergencies ... without any proof!), or by the school if they consider the absence to be part of the educational process, which sport is! Easy peasy, right!

So off we went after school, up to Las Vegas. We arrived late in the evening at our hotel and as Hendrik already had his first game the next day, we went straight to bed ... there would be plenty of opportunities later on to explore Vegas. I'll cover our visit to Las Vegas in a separate post.
Although the brown fields suggested constant hot and dry weather in Vegas (the reason why we drove 6 hours!!), we were treated with no such thing during this tournament 😕. But for people who know us, this will not come as a surprise ... whenever we're on a trip, bad weather seems one of the constants.

As you can see, we're not alone 😝

Luckily we're equipped like real Americans by now, meaning that we take our chairs and blankets (and in case of sunny weather a sun umbrella 😎). There is no cafeteria, therefore forget about enjoying a beer while watching the game ... so at the very least you have to make yourself comfortable, right?

Besides the fact that they had the opportunity to play outside again, it was also good for team building as they did some fun things together after the games.

When we returned back home, there was another new layer of snow, which was perfect as we expected a visitor from Belgium at the end of the month. He obviously came for us 😬, but definitely didn't mind coming over to enjoy the famous powder snow here.