First Soccer Game!

In order to help Luke burn off some energy this summer and give him something a little structured to do, we enrolled him in a soccer program. It is a program for Under 4s and consists of a short lesson/practice session and then a 3v3 game.

We have been trying to prepare him for soccer for awhile now by talking to him about it. We have met lots of resistance because he would remind us that he is a baseball player, not a soccer player! He was also not impressed to be on the green team instead of the RED team (we convinced him that his team was called The Green Reds). He was unhappy when I brought home shinguards for him last weekend, but wore them to bed when we told him that catchers wear shinguards, too.

He has been iffy about naps lately, so I was surprised that he fell asleep for a nap on Saturday, the day of his first session. Which started at 4:30. And he fell asleep at 3. Yikes. We woke him up at about 3:50 and he fought us from that moment until he got to the facility. He cried the whole way there. We promised him if he didn't like it we didn't have to go back and we could get ice cream to celebrate his first game (sigh -- resorting to food bribery). He still didn't want to go.

Until we got in. And he saw the teams in front of him playing. Then he perked up. And then I gave him his uniform shirt, and he was convinced:

When the group before him was done, he ran out, grabbed a ball, and had a blast! So much of a blast that he didn't really pay much attention when they tried to do the lesson with them. I tried to go out there and hold his hand for a little while, but that didn't really help. I was just excited that he wasn't crying (several of the kids were).

The poor kid liked to kick the ball and fall down immediately. That reminds me of...me. I could never stay on my feet while playing. Poor Luke.

He is going to have to work on having nice hands. Luke gets great joy out of tackling people. That is not good. His pushing stressed me out! He kept going between pushing and hugging. I am hopeful that he'll learn to be less pushy by next weekend. I do think that by the end of the game he was doing less overt pushing and more of a soccer "lean-in" with the shoulder. Which is not better, but a step in the right direction!

The lesson was adorable (even if he didn't pay attention), and the game was really cute, too. Every time the kids did something right during the game, they got a stamp on their hand. It was fun to watch. 

He ran for an hour straight (the 3v3 game turned into an everyone v everyone game because so many of the kids were having a hard time just being on the field). He was a sweaty mess, but he loved it!