Soccer!

Soen's second soccer game was today. He and his teammates were much improved over last week. Last week I think the score was about 20-0. No exaggeration, although we kind of lost track about five minutes into the game. I think the score would have been higher but the other team got tired of scoring. This week, however, we only lost 5-1. But at least we scored a goal!

What I love about watching kids play sports is that they have no idea what they're doing. We take for granted that we know the basics of how to play sports. For instance, we know that the people wearing the same color shirt as us are on our team. This concept still hasn't quite sunk in with my son's team. In fact the whole "team" concept is still pretty fuzzy. On the sidelines they may get it, but when the ball is in play, kids will just take the ball away from whoever has it.

Another concept that seems pretty basic is knowing which goal you're supposed to kick the ball into. Now, to be fair, it does change halfway through the game. But it is something that needs to be pointed out to them every five minutes and there's no guarantee they'll remember once the ball is in play.

Anyway, I took a bunch of videos from the first two games. It was hard to whittle down to two clips but I think this first one shows pretty much what last week's game was like. And the second one does a good job of showing the team's improvement. Especially Soen's. He barely took his hands of out of his pockets last time. (Frankly, I was just glad he played. Two weeks ago he was too scared to go on the field.) This time he almost scored three goals. You can tell he was having a lot more fun, too.