Steve volunteered to coach Samuel's first soccer team.
We met Steve at the end of his soccer coach training so that we could meet Samuel's team mates.
Samuel was super excited to get his jersey. A little disappointed it wasn't blue, but he got over it quickly.
Here Samuel is getting all suited up for his first game
Shira loves to play soccer too. Probably more than Samuel. Not sure how we're going to convince her to wait another year after this one before she can be on a team.
The coach consults his game plan. Well, actually he's looking at the notebook to make sure all the families turned in their forms.
Coaching 5 year olds is all about crowd control.
As the season went on, Steve discovered the kids enjoyed pretend games while they were practicing. I think the favorite was pretending to be cars while you dribbled your ball around the field. Complete with calls of Red light, Yellow Light, Green light, and everyone's favorite CRASH!, when all the kids would fall down on the ground.
After some consultation the first day, the team decided to name themselves the "Green Ninjas". Samuel suggested the name. Most of the team instantly fell in love with it. Steve asked if anyone else had suggestions, at which point, there was a chorus of, "How about Red Ninjas? Or Yellow Ninjas? What about White Ninjas?" So Ninja it was, and since the jerseys were green... Which ended up being a good call, since there was a team with red jerseys - I'll give you one guess what their name was. And they weren't the only _______ (insert color here) Ninjas.
Samuel's first game. He played against a number of his classmates.
AYSO does there best to arrange rosters and game schedule by which school you attend, which was pretty neat. It meant that Samuel knew a bunch of the kids on other teams that we played. And since he had just stared kindergarten, it meant that he met a bunch of kids through soccer and got to know them better at school.
Over time, Steve discovered that kindergarteners have very low attention spans. Our team was much more successful when Steve kept reminding players that they were playing a soccer game, and that they should look for the ball.
There were 8 players on each team, and only 4 played at a time. AYSO is an "everyone plays" league, which meant that in four 5 minute quarters, each child was supposed to play two quarters. Of course, this also meant, that each child sat out two quarters. Some of the kids seemed to enjoy sitting on the sidelines and listening to me read the books I brought with me to entertain Shira, more than they enjoyed the game.
There were a couple of kids who had to be cajoled onto the field. I promised I would read more when they came back.
Samuel, however, really enjoyed playing, and would happily play extra quarters if we were down a player.
I love the Good Game hand slap at the end.
Samuel's team lost their first game. Steve and I were curious to see how he was going to deal with losing, when the time came. He took it in stride. We were both pleasantly surprised. His team lost more games than they won, this season, but he always wanted to play, and though he did keep score*, he wasn't too bummed when they lost. Yay for team sports!
*AYSO does not keep even an "unofficial" score at this level. This does not stop the kids, however.
