The Girl's soccer season got off to a rough start this year. The first game was away (far away) at 8am, and some of the players couldn't make it. We had the bare minimum of players, and no substitutes. We also had no goalie, as the team hadn't been able to line one up all summer. By the end of the game the girls were really tired, so they ended up losing that game. Plus the girl who played goalie in the second half was really needed out on the field.
The mother of this second girl who played goalie was SO horrified (it's hard to be a goalie's parent), that she got on the phone immediately after the game and called a friend who has a girl this age, and got them to come to our team's pizza party that very day. We told this girl that she could play with us and see if she liked it, but she'd have to sign up for the team THAT DAY! So she did, and now we have a goalie!
The next game we won, scoring the only goal in the entire game.
The next Saturday there was another game scheduled in a town 1 hour from here at 8am. That wouldn't have been SO bad, but it rained like crazy all night! At 5am we were calling Coach to make sure we had to get up and drive, and we couldn't believe it, but he said the game was on!
They played in drizzle, but seemed OK with that as we parents huddled under umbrellas. The other team looked really good and we were looking pretty bad the entire first half. They scored one in the first half, and I thought we were goners. It seemed like we couldn't do anything that we usually do. Even The Girl on defense was having problems.
At halftime I heard Coach yelling at the girls, and I was hoping it wasn't going to be another one of those games where we get up really early and drive a long way to get yelled at by the Coach. But he seemed to get the girls energized, and they came back out with new energy.
In the second half he took The Girl out for a few minutes, then put her back in at midfield. Yay! (we've been wanting her to have the opportunity to play forward more often) On the first play she broke loose and was dribbling upfield with the ball. Three players from the other team converged on her, including the goalie! I remember hearing the coach yell, "There's no goalie!" Well, The Girl went down in a dogpile, but meanwhile, another player from our team went ahead and kicked the ball (which was sitting in front of the goal) into the goal. Yay!
Later, the Girl crossed the ball in front of the goal, and another teammate kicked it in. Yay! So they ended up winning 2-1. The second half was completely different, and we looked like the better team, managing to keep the pressure on the other team's goal for most of the second half.
Everyone was so happy that we took the girls out to breakfast afterward.
Yesterday's game was very similar, with coach putting The Girl forward for maybe a quarter of the game, helping the team to score 3 goals within about 10 minutes.
We are very happy, as we'd been lobbying the coach to allow her to score more this year. And of course it's more fun to win. So right now her team is #1 in the standings with a 3-1 record. Wow!
The Girl is in 5th grade this year, and seems to LOVE doing her homework! She comes home and gets on the computer, and does research and writes little papers for hours! I hope she stays this motivated in the years to come. She's got so much energy, that my challenge will be to keep it focused in a good direction.
I think The Boy is getting ready to grow again. He's already around 6'4". The other day I had some steaks in the refrigerator that I had to cook even though the Husband wasn't home to help eat them. Well, the Boy ate 3 of them that very night! I had to hide the 2 remaining, or he would have eaten them too! He took one for lunch the next day.
Well, at least the rest of us got to eat one or two of them. I think the hardest thing is the running commentary that K provides me almost constantly. The Boy isn't doing this and he should be doing that. People, I can only take so much negativity! I love them all, I just hope we can all make it through the next school year without anybody (me) having a nervous breakdown!
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