Who is that kid?

Last night my 5 and half year old daughter had another soccer game. This is six on six with no goalie. Typically I try to adhere to the philosophy of “It isn’t about winning, it’s about having fun.” The key word in that sentence is “try”, however, being the competitive person I am I tend to adhere to my own take “it’s about having fun, which tends to happen when you win.”

Anyhow, we came out and scored two quick goals to their one goal in the first quarter and I was feeling good about our chances of having “a lot of fun” in the game. So first quarter ends and they start the second quarter and within 10 seconds of kicking the ball off they had scored a goal. Apparently the Pele of the Lehi City 5 & 6 year old soccer league was on their team and their coach was kind enough to sit him out for the first quarter. The second quarter was so scary and ugly for our team that I can’t remember what happened. It is like one of those childhood memories that gets repressed because it is so damaging to the psyche. Anyhow, by the time we were half way through the 4th period I was full on “it isn’t about winning, it’s about having fun” because I didn’t have any other choice. I think they beat us by about 8 or 9 goals. This kid was unbelievable, thoughts of that kid from the Little League world series came to mind who was two years older than everyone else but sneaked into the league, but since his twin sister (the Mia Hamm of the Lehi City League) is also on the team I had to accept my fate.

I did take some solace from a cute statement made by one of the girls on my team during a half time exchange.

“Is it almost over yet Coach?”

“No Abbie, we still have have the same amount of time left that we just played, why, do you not want to play?”

“No coach I want to play, but I really like the treats, the treats are my favorite thing”

So, I think I really do need to focus on the whole “It isn’t about winning, it’s about having fun” especially when the other team has future potential MLS, EPL stars playing…

On another note, my daughter Boo picked up slide tackling yesterday. It wasn’t really a text book slide tackle but it was highly effective. In essence she will run at whoever has the ball and jump forward with both feet extended forward (as if she was doing a bum bounce on a trampoline) and squarely hit the ball and then land on her buttocks. The first time she did it was by accident, then she realized its effectiveness and eventually that is all she would do, so I had to have her stop because she was headed for an accident or serious injury to someone else. (Maybe she should have tried it on Pele)