Ethan the Soccer Player

I think several of our blog readers have already heard my ramblings for why I put Ethan in 2 separate Soccer activities this summer, but for the sake of journal keeping I'll tell you again. Last summer was the first time that Ethan participated in any kind of organized sport. He played in a month-long league for 3 and 4 year olds. He was just barely 3 so often he was out-sized and out-skilled by his teammates and the other team. He loved it though- at least for the beginning of the season. There were no practices- just games and he was happy to just go out there and kick the ball (lots of the other little kids were entertaining to watch though because they prefered picking flowers or kicking the ball out of bounds instead of trying to score). But by the end of the month, lots of the other teams had chosen a goalie so where Ethan was able to easily score in the beginning on a basically empty goal, by the end, someone was stopping his ball- with their hands no less which greatly offended Ethan since he had been told not to use his hands. His 3 year old mind just could not wrap itself around someone being "mean" and using their hands to block his goals as being a legitimate part of the game and so he often melted down into tears and screams. He does have a bit of the Kitchen competitive streak in him and I will admit he gets being a bad sport from my side of the family.
So this summer, I was hesitant to put him back into the same league, already imagining the tantrums and tears only this time from a much bigger 4 year old. When I found a league that was "practice only" I jumped on it. So Ethan has been going to weekly soccer practices for the last 3 weeks. And he LOVES it! No tears, no melt-downs. And anytime he's started to tell me that he "beat" this kid or that he kicked it better than "that kid", I've been able to emphasize that this is about having fun and sharing- not about winning. Ethan is in the green shirt above waiting his turn to practice dribbling the ball.

It's also been a good class for him to work on skills. He's now much better at dribbling the ball, stopping it with his feet, and using his left foot.

Here he's in orange standing in front of his coach as he explains their next drill. So after 3 weeks of focusing on soccer being fun instead of all about winning, I was interested to see how his first game in the other league would go.

Taylor was very happy that his jersey this year is not blue so they can't be the Bluejays (he thought that was too sissy of a name last year). This year Ethan is lime green so the suggested team names so far are the green machine, Criptonite, or Slime. Ethan's on the left with some of his little teammates and a father who stepped in to be coach.

I have to admit I like his team this year much better. The parents seem to be more involved and were standing on the field or at the goal box to help coach the kids. They even went and took the kids off the field when it was someone else's turn to sub in.

I'll try to videotape parts of his next game so you can see just how excited Ethan is. He literally spent half the game doing his "excited dance" as I call it and the other half running full speed ahead. (His excited dance consists if him bouncing up and down and switching legs front to back).

On the very first posession he kicked the ball right down and scored a goal and then came running back past us with the cheesiest grin and a big thumbs up for us. It helps to be 4 and bigger than the other kids. A few possessions later when he did the same thing his coach kindly pulled him back to be the goalie which I think was wonderful. It let him play another role and let the other kids have a turn.

At one point near the beginning of the game, the ball went out of bounds and so they needed to throw it in. The little high school ref (red shirt guy) tried explaining it to Ethan by saying "throw it over your head", so Ethan stood at the line, and threw it backwards over his head and out of bounds again. He did this several times before the other kids got impatient enough to just kick it back inbounds. Oh well, he'll figure out the finer points of soccer later. Very entertaining though but sadly I wasn't quick enough with the camera.

At one point when he was brought back to be the goalie, another kid tried to join him in the goal and Ethan physically "helped" him out of the goal. Hopefully he'll like taking his turn in each position as the month goes on. Overall it was a fun game. Lots of crazy kid antics to watch including one child who prefered running figure 8's around the cones instead of playing and another little girl who didn't want to play and stood and cried on the field for 5 minutes refusing to move. There was one almost meltdown from Ethan where the tears started but at least not the screaming. Apparently another teammate had kicked the ball away from him (not that he hadn't done that several times already to others himself) so we've still got plenty to work on.

Taylor's mom's sisters and kids were all in town for a reunion this weekend so they came and watched the game. Here they are doing a "tunnel" for the kids.

And this is Ethan running back after his last goal. Can you guess how many he scored??? He'd tell you it was the "perfect" game because he's 4 years old and he scored 4 goals. Go Ethan! On a funny side note- do you see how baggy his little shorts are? Although he is fully 4, he still can only wear 24 month shorts and even those often fall off his skinny, little bum. So even though we had the drawstring pulled as tight as it would go and even though we adjusted it several times during the game, he spent most of the game running up and down the field with one hand holding up his shorts.