Little Man Soccer

Last spring we attempted to put Taz on a t-ball team. It didn't go so well. He enjoyed practice but said he "just wasn't ready for the games", they were too boring. Luckily the team was composed of various ages and so WG happily took over Taz's spot. Everyone was happy.
Taz was certain that he would enjoy soccer in the fall, so we went ahead and tried that. He actually did really well and I was impressed with not only his improved soccer skills, but also with his increased capacity for organized sport in general.

Since he has a fall birthday he was placed in the under five group. This was seriously the cutest little thing you have ever seen. They have all the kids from the league under five meet at this large park on Saturday afternoon. They do some group drills and then some team drills, and then they have a 'game'.

There are six little kids on each team and each team is assigned a different color of the same jersey. Taz's team was light blue. They looked so adorable, I just couldn't get over it. But the group was so big that I had a really hard time getting a good shot of them all. It was so cute to see them all lined up in their different colored jerseys and all ready to play soccer. And the coaches were so great. I loved Taz's coach he was such a great guy and really dealt with the little tantrums (that came not only from Taz) really well.

This was a dribble around the cones drill I believe. The also would play keep away from the coach and knock the cones over, that was Taz's favorite.
stretching with the group during the group drills, Taz and his team are on the opposite side of the circle.
The line-up, or at least part of it. I'm sorry that I couldn't capture the effect of the whole group. It really was overwhelmingly adorable.
This was one of their games. This girl in front is the coaches daughter and was very agressive and very good. Taz did a good job of playing and engaging most of the time. He even made a few goals during the season.

Here he is, not smiling at me. The weather was so nice most of the time, but the second to last Saturday we were snowed out and then it was pretty cold after that. We were all grateful when soccer season was over and we could have our Saturdays back and stop freezing at the games.


WG played soccer this fall also. Unfortunately I didn't get a single decent picture of his games. This was probably due to the fact that I was freezing at most of his games and I had to miss a couple. He was delighted with his season and he is definitely improving, if not in skill at least in understanding the game. He was a great help, always letting his teammates know what they should be doing :). He was also pleased to have three good friends on his team, although given that two of the three are about as athletic as he is I think this may have contributed to their number of wins over the season. Oh well, at least they had fun. He is thinking he wants to take up karate or tae-qua-do (I have no clue how to spell that), these more individual sports might be more his style, we'll see I guess.