Recap: Another day with a slightly short turn out, with about 27 guys and 1 woman for most of the afternoon, meaning two fields with one sub per team. My team was pretty good but it was an unbalanced game—we pummeled the other team and probably should have switched a few players to make it more even.

Health Report: Fine. Tired from the excess running you get with fewer subs.

Performance: Not good. Because the other team was a lot worse, I think I tried to do too much tricky stuff early and none of it—and I do mean virtually none of it—paid off. Worse, guys were putting themselves in good positions and I wasn’t able to hit them. Frustrating, although I got better as the day wore on and managed some good one-touch stuff once the fields merged and the quality of play rose and I went back to bread-n-butter.

Rating: — A sub-par performance for much of the day and I was thinking I was destined for a two-star rating (I do think about these things as I play) but then a couple good passes helped open things up later on and I scored on a strong first-time shot with (lo!) my left foot. Still, my passing was off and I started to feel guilty about not being able to provide some good service for guys doing tough running.

I did get the ultimate compliment though from a guy I hadn’t played with before. On the bench he said he liked Thanksgiving even though he wasn’t American, and when I asked he said he was from Turkey (insert Thanksgiving/Turkey joke here). When he asked where I was from, I said “Here” (meaning the US, Wisconsin, and sorta Madison) and he looked perplexed. He repeated the question as though he hadn’t heard right. Then he raised his eyebrows and said, “You’ve got good control on the ball, so I didn’t think you were American.”