Sports agreement

For those of you who don't know my husband, he is not a huge sports guy. When we got married he told me that I would be in charge of teaching sports to our kids and I agreed to it. I've been trying to carry out this agreement by teaching the kids soccer and over the summer playing on a baseball team. I'm not too sure if we will get into football other than watching BYU. I'm not a huge fan of the sport for kids and the leagues around here are incredibly time consuming and very competitive. Basketball will also have to wait a little and we'll see if the kids play other than on a church team when they're in YM/YW.

The more I reflect on my family growing up and having my parents living near us now, the more I realize how competitive of a family we can be. We are definitely sticklers for the rules and we loved playing games as a family - whether it was cards, a board game, or badminton, soccer or crochet in our yard. (I was just reading through this and noticed my typo - that should read "croquet", not "crochet" - while I do know how to crochet a little, it was not a family game that we played in the yard...)

The most popular team sport for our family growing up was soccer. I played soccer starting in 4th grade and played up through 10th grade. The only reason I quit after 10th grade was because I didn't care for the coaches for my high school team and how they ran things. It quit being fun for me and I decided that I wanted to try out the track & field team instead. Most of my siblings also played soccer to varying degrees.

This year we have Luke and M&M playing again and I signed up to be the assistant coach for M&M's team. I would love to be the head coach for her team but I am somewhat limited on how much I can do because of my younger kids. Usually I end up having to take them all to M&M's practices so I can only help out so much.

One of the downsides to playing soccer here in Utah is that the sport is a generation behind. Where I grew up in Virginia, everyone played soccer. It was the popular sport. Out here in Utah though, there are very few people my age who grew up playing soccer. Because of this, not many parents know the rules for soccer and how to play. My biggest complaint with the league that M&M and Luke play in is that they do not have paid refs for the games. Each team is supposed to supply a ref for one half of the game - whether it is a coach, parent, or sibling of someone on the team. The problem with this is that not many people really know the rules and so the kids don't learn how to play correctly.

Since I grew up playing the game and for the most part know the rules, I usually volunteer myself to ref M&M's games. I have really been enjoying doing this and whenever a question comes up about something I look it up in the FIFA Soccer Laws on the computer when I get home. This year has been even more challenging because M&M is playing on a full-size field and they are playing the offsides rule for the first time. It is incredibly hard for one person to ref the whole field for her games. Luckily for the first 2 games there was a parent on the other team who took one side of the field and I took the other side. Last week I reffed the whole field for the whole game which kept me on my toes!

After M&M's game 2 weeks ago the mom of one of the girls on our team came up to me and told me that she really enjoyed watching me ref the games. She said that she liked the fact that I even call the little things (such as an incorrect throw-in) and I take the time to explain the rules to the girls when I make a call. She said that it is frustrating watching her older daughter who plays in an older division play because the people reffing don't know what they're doing.

It has also been a nice time for my mom because when she is able to come to the games she gets Baby K duty - which she just loves! After the last game she was reluctant to give her back because she was being so good and just kept grinning at everyone!