Aha! Sports! Today, your Lost Coast Outpost presents a throwback traditional version of our once popular feature LoCO Sports! First, an explanation: See, recognizing that our little blog thingy doesn’t really have the manpower to chase down all the cool sporting events that our local kids are dominating in, what we used to do back in the old days (last year) is subcontract out this task to the excited adults who roam the sidelines. We were happy. They were happy. Everyone wins.

Thus, presented below is a report submitted by superfan and team mom Carolyn Perkins about the Mad River United Elite boys soccer team’s exploits in Oregon last weekend where they kicked many an ass. Take it away!:

Champions! Once again, the Mad River United (MRU) Elite boys decided to push themselves and it paid off.

This past weekend they entered the Rogue Memorial Challenge, playing a year up (rather than play U-13, they played U-14), meaning that this mostly 7th grade team faced boys finishing their freshman year in high school.

 Working together as a well-oiled, confident and passionate group of players, the boys showed incredible teamwork as they faced multiple big city clubs. Besting teams from multiple states, the U-13 MRU Elite won four matches, scored 14 points and kept a clean sheet (no goals were scored against them) throughout the qualifying rounds. Goals were scored by Andy Miranda, Benicio Benavides-Garb, Caleb Coke, Garrett Hall, Josh Duncan and Levi Robbins.

Meeting up with a solid team from Oregon in the finals, the MRU Elite found themselves in their most demanding match yet. The boys played tough, fought hard for possession and did an amazing job of moving the ball. The defense, made up of Luis Melicio, Conor Barres, Sean Handl, Gabe Sanchez and keeper Skylar Carroll worked especially hard in this game to keep that clean sheet intact. While the midfield and offense made many great shots, they met up with an incredible goal keeper who made it difficult to get anything in the net.  After an hour of playing in over 80 degree heat, the game ended up going in to overtime (OT). 

The MRU Elite came out in the first half of OT looking hungry. Continuing to put the pressure on their opponent, Levi Robbins managed to sneak the ball in the net within the first three minutes. This left the team up, but well aware that they still had a lot of time left on the pitch.  The MRU Elite remained calm, stayed in the game and continued to work together seamlessly.  After what seemed like forever, the whistle blew and the MRU Elite took home first place! 

Team photo: (Front row L to R: Gabe Sanchez, Benicio Benavides-Garb, Aidan Atkins-Salazar, Sean Handl, Skylar Carroll, Levi Robbins, Caleb Coke, Josh Duncan, Spencer Olson, Connor Olson, Luis Melicio.  Back Row L to R: Assistant Coach Tim Olson, Kai Gallegos, Garrett Hall, Conor Barres, Andy Miranda, Gavin Perry and Coach Ed Handl)

LoCO will also note that this crew of youthful superhumans are still attempting to raise funds to go crush less skillful soccer players abroad in Spain. If this interests you, you can learn more about their efforts at the Mad River United Elite Facebook page.

PREVIOUS MAD RIVER UNITED:

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The LoCO Sports Deal: 

If your kids do a great sports thing and you write said thing up for the LoCO whilst simultaneously providing us an objectively good photo, well, we’ll just go ahead and run that business. This deal will be good until a) it becomes overwhelming for us to keep up with submissions, b) overly invested parents make us regret this decision by acting worse than kids in our comment section or c) someone steps up to be the full time LoCO sports go-getter for virtually no pay.