Gooaallll!!!!!

Yes, our experience of youth sports has begun, albeit in very gentle fashion. For a few weeks, while it was still hot (Texans only do outdoor activities when it is painfully hot), we participated in the primary soccer program at St. Catherine's. Jamie tended to claim that he didn't to go at first, but was then pretty enthusiastic once he was there. It was fun for us because he's talking to all kinds of kids, they are saying hi to him, he's joking with them, thus providing evidence that he has lots of friends at school even though he will report none of this.

Jamie's a little more coordinated with his hands than his feet at this point, but he gave it a good try. Some kind of turning point came when I started helping out by reffing/coaching his game every week. He was tickled by this and waited for the first moment when I knelt down to tie somebody's shoes (a major part of my role here) and took a running start and jumped on my back. This is one of his favorite ways to show affection to me and he seemed to feel after that he had a real stake in things.

So me and two teams of 4 4-5 year-olds. Interesting. It started out with Jamie, inexplicably, biting my shirt (another sign of affection, I guess). The other players were pleased by this and came forward to do the same. So I put a stop to that, saying "No biting the coach's shirt," which they all thought quite funny. But then a young boy named Will came towards me. I stopped him, but he said, "I'm not biting, I'm going to hug you," which he did. So I said, "Hugging the coach is OK," and we did that for a bit. Then we started to play. This goes about the way you can imagine, a great scrum, out of which eventually emerges a ball and one running child. The others follow. Often this is towards the goal but sometimes they simply shoot off the side of the field and keep going until stopped. Coaching involved some measure of the futile effort to get them to pass the ball but also a lot of consoling, for kids who received a variety of injuries, and some negotiating of feelings. One boy stopped playing, and made everyone stop, because he felt a girl had laughed after he was struck in the stomach with a glancing blow from the ball. So I had to bring them together and effect a conciliation. I also had to encourage some kids to try and put the ball in the goal rather than themselves.

Jamie generally did well. The first few weeks he tended to simply trail after the ball and he was not fast enough to catch the slightly older kids so got a little lost. But by the last week he started to get the idea of going where the ball/person is headed and that was good. He was also on a very weak team and actually seemed frustrated with the fact that the other three players tended to wander off to inspect pieces of mulch. Then he scored a goal and that was exciting. I have to admit that I sort of used my power to rig it for him. We did a free kick from near the goal line. I positioned him directly in front of the goal and without encouraging the defense to pay much attention, I told his teammate to pass it to him. But to be fair, he took advantage of the opportunity and kicked it on the roll and buried the ball in the net, some 2 feet away. He seemed highly pleased by this. Final score 8-1 other team, but that was the last goal of the season, so this will give the fans something to think about over the winter.