March 3, 2012

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James played soccer from the time when he was really, really young.  His dad started this league at their church–Saturday Morning Soccer.  I think they still ran it up until a couple years ago.  That’s where his roots are from–a Saturday morning, semi-informal league where you learn the basics and practice them.  There isn’t anything like that around here.  In the town we just moved from, there was nothing even available for kids who weren’t in school yet.  Where we are now, there at least is a soccer association which includes the littlest of them.  So, we have finally found a program that has participation opportunities for kids under five.

Today was the first day of Brayden’s “winter soccer” league (even though we are nearing spring).  He was completely ecstatic about it.  And it was an hour of complete joy for me to watch him play.  They did a few drills, played a couple of games and then scrimmaged.  If you want to go back and read what I wrote about our experience about last year’s summer soccer camp that we found, here are three posts:  1, 2, and 3.  I was totally high strung, Brayden was sort of a cry baby and the whole thing wasn’t organized very well.  This experience has already been much different–I was calm, cool and collected. . . Brayden didn’t cry the entire time AND he had fun and smiled like a champ. . . and it had much better organization.  There were 24 kids split into three groups, and they each had a coach and a helper.  The coach knew all of their names within the first fifteen minutes.  And he kept them moving the whole time.  No standing around in long lines waiting for a turn to shoot at the goal.  No contests that leave the people who are already “out”, standing around for ten minutes while they wait for the others to finish.  One happy kid = one happy momma.

And I know he’s only four. . . but isn’t it important that he starts off on the right foot?  With his daddy’s number  . . .