Soccer Season Kicks Off for T!

Soccer season is here, RMT’ers!

It’s fall in many ways, even if not weather-wise, and one way it is for us is that it’s now soccer season! T hasn’t participated in soccer for more than a year now, but he’s quite happy to be back on the field running and kicking it around. It’s as though he never left really!

The kids gather around their coaches for this season’s Kidz Love Soccer class.

The kids use “small kicks” to move their soccer balls toward the red flag during their first Kidz Love Soccer class. This organization concentrates on teaching soccer skills through individual game play (notice how each child has their own ball?) rather than highlighting competition between teams or – at this age anyway – fighting over one ball.

Headed up by the organization Kids Love Soccer, T took one of their classes twice before when he was three-years-old, and he loved both sessions. He’d have continued with a third consecutive session, but once he learned that Coach Cody was leaving the program (for college, by the way, go Coach Cody!), T wanted to step away from soccer for a short time. That was completely OK with us; that time away from the field allowed T to try out other activities, such as yoga, T-Ball, and Tennis. Our parks and rec department is cool like that, offering a wide variety of options no matter what it is that kids want to do or try next.

Yummy! A soccer ice cream cone! This is from T’s soccer class when he was three-years-old (February 2011); Coach Cody is pictured at top right.

T poses before his first Kidz Love Soccer class this fall with Long Beach (CA) Parks, Rec, and Marine. Silly me, we didn’t have the right socks to cover the guards (or really, hold them in place) for our first class (oops!).

All T wanted to do before his first soccer meeting this season was kick the ball around backwards! OK, go for it, T!

The kids got to kick a bunch of goals at the end of their first soccer class. This definitely was T’s favorite part of the class, and he looks forward to shooting for more goals later today (our class meets Fridays through the beginning of November).

As I’ve mentioned before, I just don’t feel that four-years-old (OK almost five in T’s case, but still) is the proper age for competitive team sports. Both C and I feel strongly that this is the time in T’s life to expose him to many, many different skill-based activities to see where his interests naturally gravitate; we want T to foster an honest passion or maybe just a heavy liking of a few different things. Just like T’s excitement about school, I’d rather him be excited about participating with his peers in a new activity than concentrating on kicking ass at it. Life’s a long road, and there’s plenty of time for ass-kicking as he matures and decides what sports and activities he wishes to be kick-ass at.

C ran T around before his Kidz Love Soccer meeting last Friday. Since class meets on Fridays this fall, C can go to about half the classes (he works a 9-80 schedule). Nice!

That and let me be honest, this no teams right now attitude of ours also has a lot to do with the fact that neither C nor I are ready for that crappy-yet-unavoidable-once-we-enter-it competitive extracurricular environment, and I don’t mean the kids! But you already knew that, right RMT’ers? Score.