Let's Go Smurfs!

So today was Leah's first soccer game on the team I am coaching called the Smurfs.  As you could imagine, our uniforms are blue. 

 

It's nice because I have a good group of parents (and that often makes the difference regardless of the players) and this is a non-competitive league/age group.  In Leah's age group, it is five on five with no goalies and no score is kept.  The emphasis is on fun so that's what I try to do at practice.  My friend Beth Ann e-mailed me all the games our kids used to play at Soccer Tots together and Matt ordered me a phenomenal book from Amazon called The Baffled Parent's Guide to Coaching 6-and-Under Soccer by David Williams and Scott Graham.  It's really good because my coaching experience is with older, club-level players.  It has lots of fun games to play with them instead of the typical stand in line and do drills, which, with twelve 5-and 6-year-olds, is a better idea.  I just keep them moving all the time.

So for our game no score is kept and everyone is a winner but in reality, we won 2 - 1.  Leah said she had fun but she wasn't that involved in the game.  Of course the game is more like a rugby scrum so I can understand why she was a little tentative to mix it up in there.  Leah wasn't the only one who was on the fringes.  What was more interesting is that my two smallest (and youngest) players were right in the middle of things.  One of them, Brian, spent the first week of practice sitting on his mom's lap and watching.  Even now he picks and chooses when he wants to play and he hardly speaks so it was nice to see him come out of his shell.

Isabella & Brian, my 5-yr-old dynamos.

The game goes fast enough--it is comprised of four five-minute quarters but it was still so hot and humid that even I needed a shower after the game.  It doesn't help that it rained this morning before the game and a typhoon is on the way.  (Sidebar:  Typhoon Sanba is near Okinawa and is making its way towards Korea.  The eye of the storm won't hit Japan but we should get some bands of rain and wind.)  We don't have a game next Saturday but the Saturday after that (Sept. 29) we have a double-header.  By the end of the second game I might have to beg kids to play if it continues to be so humid. 

Will, Brian and Jordan.

 

Merrick and Payton say "Let's go Smurfs!"

 

The only bad part about coaching is during games I have to be on the field to ref/make sure kids go in the right direction, etc. so I don't get to take pictures or film Leah playing.  I hope at least one of the parents is a good photographer.  I took all of these after the game,  And one of the moms even took one with me in it.

Me and my Smurfs.