Soccer Season

Our Saturdays were sufficiently filled up with soccer games for about 8 weeks straight, but I have to admit I love it. I realize we won't have much free time on Saturdays for a couple of months each time I sign the kids up, but I so look forward to watching the games and seeing them improve. Nathan played for the first time this season as well as Megan. We have asked Megan in the past if she wanted to sign up and she has never seemed interested at all. Somewhere in the middle of Spring season she mentioned that maybe next time she would want to play. And she still had the desire when we signed up for Fall season. She was a total surprise to us. Our little girlie girl has some serious SCRAP to her. She got right in there scoring goals and going after the ball. Her coach said on multiple occasions that she was the most improved, especially since she was a first time player, and that she really listened to him when he gave direction (and then would do it). It was great to watch. I volunteered to be a referee and was assigned to be the ref for Megan's team, so I didn't get to do as much screaming and yelling as I would have like :) I had to be fair and impartial as the ref. This was super challenging on the first game when I was right there by all the action and Megan got the ball and started heading right towards the goal. Unfortunately it was the wrong goal...and I just didn't feel like I could yell out, "turn around Meg" right there on the field. Oh man. At least she scored again in the right goal to make up for it. HE HE HE. There were a couple of pretty intense games that I had to run, which wasn't really my favorite, but I definitely learned from them. Overall I enjoyed the experience. I think I'll probably do it again next season. Nathan had all sorts of fun playing. You could pretty much tell within the first two minutes of the game what kind of day this was going to be for him: he would either be gung-ho and aggressive about blocking and attacking the ball (and therefore score a few goals) or he would be kind of in his own little world and run along side the ball but not really have his heart into it. When he had his head in the game he was pretty good. He definitely has a good power kick. A couple of times he scored from his kick-off kick. Ben improved this season as well. He moved up to U-10, which means he started playing on the bigger field using goalies and off-side calls. As the season went on he was better about running hard through the whole game. He scored a couple of times (once on the last game of the season, along with a good assist too). He's not super aggressive with his possession of the ball but he plays hard and can run down the opponent. He loves it.