By ALEX COSTELLO
The girls on the team, all of whom are 6 and 7 years old, don’t worry about endorsements, mean coaches or any of the pressures that professional athletes have. They play their sport for one reason.
“It’s fun,” said Jamie Behar, 6, a player on the Force. “We make friends.”
The Force is part of the Oceanside Intramural Soccer Club. Any girl from Oceanside can sign up and join a team. The league holds two different seasons a year-- a spring, from the beginning of April to the beginning of June, and a fall season, from the beginning of September to November. During these seasons, the girls play teams of other girls from Oceanside. During the winter and summer months, things change and the girls play in regional tournaments. Instead of playing other Oceansiders, teams of 10 girls compete against teams from nearby towns like East Meadow, Merrick and Massapequa.
The Force is still a relatively new team, having only formed in 2008. They competed in one tournament last year and did not do very well. But this year, they have entered into five tournaments already, and have been making great progress.
“They’re doing great,” said Assistant Coach Brad Ladner. “We’ve had five tournaments, and we started off basically in last place, and now in the last three tournaments, we came in two second [places] and one third [place]. So we’ve really turned around and are doing great.”
The team plays multiple games in each tournament. In the winter, the tournaments are held indoors. Because there are many games that need to be played, and only one field in the indoor stadiums the teams play in, the games are shortened from the normal 50 minutes of the regular season matches to 10-15 minutes to make sure that the tournaments move as quickly as possible.
“They usually shorten them because there’s only one field to play on, whereas outdoors they run multiple games at the same time,” said Head Coach Neil Bloom. “Everyone has to get on the same field, so they shorten the games.”
Each town hosts a tournament during the winter season, and Oceanside's was on Feb. 21 at Turf City. At its sixth tournament last weekend, The Force played four games, winning one, losing two, and tying one. At the end, they came in fourth place.
"The difference between first and last place, especially with young girls, is so small," said Bloom. "Sometimes it's just a goal." Bloom pointed out that the team the Force tied with was the team that came in first place.
"They played great and had a great time," he added.
But for the girls of the Force, winning is only one of the things that they like about playing soccer.
“It’s all about having fun,” said 7-year-old Ashley Ladner.
But that doesn’t mean that the girls on the Force don’t like the same thing that every other player in sports likes.
“I like the part where you have fun,” said Jillian Bloom, 7, the daughter of the team’s coach, “and I like the part where you win and you get trophies.”
Comments about this story? ACostello@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 207.
