It's soccer time!

Before we even had a place to live down here I had C signed up for soccer.  I found an organization that looked good, but the price tag was a little hard to swallow.  Probably only because we were coming from paying $20 for him to play on base.  So, in reality, I don't think this club is overpriced...just normally priced.  I'm glad I went with it because it's already been a good experience.  There are individuals from the organization who supervise the practices but each team has its own parent volunteer coaches.  They had practices as a whole age group for about a month before their skills test.  They all did a little dribbling drill and based on their times they were put onto teams.  The idea behind that is to avoid what usually happens (as it did each season he played at Ft. Meade) where you get one or two "star" players on a team and nobody else ever touches the ball.  So, this whole league is split into tiers where the kids are playing on teams with kids near their same skill level and also playing against teams on the same skill level.  C's first game was this Saturday.  I didn't know they did this, but it was awesome...they actually split the two teams in half for the game.  Which meant every kid got a ton of playing time.  A big difference from his last season on base where there were over a dozen kids on the team so he would just sit on the sidelines for half the game.  He has four coaches, but that guy in the white, he is my favorite.  Hubby had already been singing his praises after taking C to practices, saying that he was making the kids do push ups when they didn't listen.  He's British, so of course you've gotta love the accent, he's funny and he's real no-nonsense.  Which is good for C.  I hate to sit by and watch him get away with misbehavior.  Not happening with this guy.  Before the game started he told the parents of the half of the kids he was going to be coaching not to bother moving our chairs to the other field if we weren't going to cheer.  And that if we weren't loud enough we'd be doing push ups after the game.  Then he pointed at me and said "Especially you."

C scored a couple of goals.  This was right after one of them.

So was this.  Hmm...we might need to have a talk or two about the showboating.

Explaining a proper throw in, again!  He had to do it every time.  Not just with our kid.  "Ah, Americans and futbol" he sighed in exasperation.  :)

Lil' peanut was there showing his support.  Well, really just there eating snacks. ;)  He sat happily in the wagon until the last ten minutes or so...then he started to lose it.  We forgot the toys this time, so we'll be better prepared next weekend. 

They didn't win, lost by a goal or two.  But, C did pretty well.  His coach said he needs to work on keeping his head in the game and that he doesn't need to be doing all that talking on the field.  Some of it was general chit chat, but mostly arguing.  (The arguing, gah!  It is our biggest issue right now...at home, at school, and apparently on the soccer field.)  I agreed saying, "Yeah bud, you need to keep your ears open and your mouth shut."  Mr. Brit laughed and said "Good luck with that" as he walked away.  C had a lot of fun and I was proud of him!  I'm looking forward to watching the rest of his games.