Soccer Opening Day

The soccer fall season has been  well underway for about a month with practices twice a week,  and today is a day that Erika has been looking forward to for awhile. Everyday she looks at the calendar to see if she has an activity that day-usually just ballet or soccer. If it’s soccer she will ask if it’s a practice or the real thing. Her first game was today and it was “the real thing”. It was so fun to watch her run all around chasing after the ball, she’s like the energizer bunny-she just doesn’t stop.

Her team plays on two small fields with three kids on each field at a time. I love that they do this. It gives the kids a lot more playing time, and at this age that’s so important so they don’t get too bored. If the ball goes out of bounds then one of the coaches just rolls a ball back in. It keeps the game moving and the kids can just focus on dribbling and shooting the ball. At kickoff, Erika saw that one of the other coaches was holding a ball that looked just like hers. Her reaction…

..how dare they use my ball. It took her awhile to get focused again, but they as soon as she would run past that coach, she would stop and look at her ball again.

She is a little shy about actually touching the ball, but her coach was great to offer her many opportunities to get it. They tried having her kick off, but them she would just kick it to the person next to her and not want it back. Then he tried to have them kick it to her during the kickoff. Again she wasn’t too interested in that either.

He finally told her that after kick off she should go down by the net and they would kick the ball to her so she could get a goal. For three kick offs she went down there and waited patiently for the ball.  She would wait for the ball, but when one of her team mates kicked it to her, then she got confused and she would kick it the other way. She was just happy to be out there running around.

         

   When the game was over, they all lined up to high five the other team and congratulate them on a job well done. Erika had her official soccer princess stance ready, high fived the other team, ... and then happily ran off to get her after game treat. All in a hard days work. Great Job Erika!