More Spring Soccer

Saturday, May 30, 2015

Rainy Soccer Game

Saturday, May 9, 2015

Luke's soccer game was super rainy and cold!! He was totally soaked through all of his layers! He took a warm shower once he got home from the game but it took him a while to finally warm up again afterwards!

Fall Soccer 2014

Thursday, August 28

It's that time of year again!  Unfortunately Luke (and I) missed the first two games of the season when we were in Washington.  They usually don't start the season that early but this year that had our first two games scheduled before school even started...  I am co-coaching Luke's team again.  It is fun and I enjoy it.  It was a little crazy making sure everyone was where they needed to be, when they needed to be there with M&M's school being a little farther away than from our old house.  We were able to make it work though.

Spring Soccer 2014

A couple of pictures from Luke's spring soccer season:

 

MJ helping me out with the coaching!

Luke - fall soccer 2013

I team coached Luke's soccer team again this year.  It is nice to be able to split up some of the responsibilities of coaching the team and have someone else there to help out at practices and games.  Luke is the only one that we signed up for soccer this year.  M&M is too busy with band and wanting to possibly try track in the spring.  And then I never really felt like Kitty's heart was in the game - although she is a little mad at me that I didn't sign her up again...

We ended up the season with a winning record.  A couple of our first games were a little rough but by the end of the season we had really improved as a team and it was fun to watch them work together.  We had about 7 players return from our team from last year and then we picked up a bunch of 8th graders which was nice for us.  We had a really good group of kids (all boys except one girl) that for the most part were really fun to coach and hard workers!  I am looking forward to working with them again in the spring!

Luke really improved a lot this year and it was fun watching him develop in his soccer skills.  I tried him out at midfield this year and he did a really good job at that position.

Look how dark the sky was!!  We actually weren't sure if we would be able to finish the whole game before the storm came but it managed to hold off until the game was over!

It poured on the way home!

Just took a header

Getting ready to take a throw-in

Team huddle before the start of the second half

Wet soccer!

Kitty in particular had a couple of really wet games.  There was also one game of Luke's where I remember getting soaked on the sideline while I was trying to coach!  Here are some pictures as proof that it can rain here sometimes in Utah:

At first Kitty was not enjoying herself but then towards the end of the game it was so ridiculous the amount of water on the field that she was laughing.  (And I was out there refereeing the game.)

Spring soccer 2013 - Kitty

Kitty's team was a little frustrating to watch once again.  I'm not sure how much Kitty learned about how to play soccer throughout the year.  Unfortunately with volunteer coaches there are all different levels of expertise amongst them.  I think she enjoyed herself but she never really seemed to "get" the game to me.  After talking with her a little about it we decided to not sign her up again for this next year.  I think she has a lot of talent in other areas and I want to try and find something for her that she will really love.

Spring soccer 2013 - Luke

I had a lot of fun with Luke's team this spring season.  It was fun watching the players really come together and learn to play as a team by the end of the season.  We ended up losing our first two games of the season but then won or tied the rest of the games.  Our last 4 games were on Thursday evenings which actually worked out pretty well and I think because of that we had most of our players at each game.  I enjoyed co-coaching with another parent in the neighborhood and we plan on doing it again next year.

Spring soccer spectators

The girls having some fun on the playground during Luke's soccer games.  We tried to leave them home whenever we could because I couldn't keep an eye on them and coach Luke's team at the same time.

Spring soccer 2013 - M&M

M&M had some good games and some bad games with her team.  Unfortunately her team was mostly girls with only 3 boys - one of which didn't come to many of the games and the other two were on the high school track team so they sometimes couldn't come either.  Some of the teams that they played against were really, really good and others were about on par with her team.  M&M got the chance to play forward in a lot of the games and was able to score several goals for her team.  Also towards the end of the season she played goalie in a couple of the games when their regular goalie didn't show.  She has played it before when she was on her all-girls team a few years ago but it has been a while.  At the high school level in our soccer league they play 6 vs 6 on a smaller field.  They focus a lot on passing and moving the ball down the field.  It was fun to watch their games when they weren't being crushed!  

We decided to not sign her up for next year.  The fall is crazy with marching band and then she is considering joining the track team for the spring season.  If she decides not to try track then we may sign her up for spring soccer.  We will have to wait and see what she decides to do and how time demanding her classes are next  year.

Soccer clinic

January 8-17

A few days after swimming lessons started I got an email from the soccer league that our kids play in announcing an off-track soccer clinic that they were offering on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the morning.  So I talked to Luke and Kitty about it and asked if they were interested.  Kitty definitely was and Luke was on the fence about it.  I think if he had known someone that was going to participate it he would have jumped at the opportunity.  I decided to sign him up anyways because he is the type of child that would be content to spend his whole time off-track playing video games or computer games and I wanted him to get out and do something physical, especially during these cold winter months.  

So Kitty's class was for an hour in the morning and then Luke's class followed right after that for the next hour.  Kitty really enjoyed herself and Luke didn't care for it so much.  There ended up being only one other boy in his class and then there were 6 girls.  I think he got some good exercise out of it but he did nothing but grumble about it whenever I picked him up from the class!  Thankfully for him there were only 4 classes so it really wasn't that big of a deal.

The classes were offered at our local rec center.  They converted one of their indoor courts into an indoor playing field with artificial turf that looked like grass.  It's a pretty cool court and I think it is fun to play on the smaller field and be able to bounce the ball off of the walls.  Unfortunately I completely forgot to take any pictures of them playing!

Fall Soccer Wrap-up - Luke

I helped coach Luke's team this year and we had a pretty good, fun season.  We kind of split up the coaching at the games with me coaching the offense and the other coach coached the defense.  It took us a couple of games to figure out how to score but when we finally figured out how to play together as a team instead of a bunch of individuals, we started winning games.  We ended the season with 3 straight wins and ended up with a 4-4 record.  We've got a good bunch of kids and parents that don't get too emotional when the refs mess up a call or when we lose a game.  They are just there to have fun and enjoy the game.  Unfortunately not all of the teams we play have been that way and we had a couple of games where things almost got kind of ugly because of what the other team's parents thought they saw happen on the field...  It's really too bad that parents have to get so emotional about the game and think that coaches would intentionally teach their team to play dirty...

The other unfortunate thing about this season was the condition of the fields that the kids played on.  Between Kitty and Luke we played on fields in two different cities and there wasn't a game that went by that either or both of the fields were completely soaked with huge puddles everywhere - and remember, this is here in Utah where it hardly ever rains, so the puddles were caused by overwatering the fields...  What a waste of water...  (And we are always being lectured here in Utah on how we need to conserve water and not overwater our lawns...)

 If you look closely in these two pictures  you can see the water splashing off of the ground where one of the puddles was located.