Soccer Mania

Our lives are now consumed by soccer! Cameron and Micah are on the same soccer team in the U12 league. Ian & Jamey are on James' soccer team in the U10 league. Micah is one of their assistant coaches (at his request). Micah is reffing soccer and Jamey is also reffing a few games. This past week we had 2 soccer games, 3 soccer practices, 1 ref meeting, and 3 ref games. Good thing we all love soccer, right? Now that Kendra and I have the ref schedules finished, we should be able to sit back and enjoy the rest of the soccer season (except for the nights when a ref calls at the last minute and says he can't make it to his game -- or, as happened this week, the ref just doesn't show up to his game and we're scrambling to find someone or to find the ref (he did eventually show up)).

One of the other soccer board members decided he wanted the old soccer shed, so there was some excitement at the soccer fields this week as they watched him try to move the shed onto a trailer to take it to his house. He did eventually get it moved and now our garage is full of soccer paraphernalia that needs to be sorted and put into the new shed once it is moved. The shed is completed except for installing the front door & painting the outside. Since the soccer season has started, it seems that there are no evenings left to work on the soccer shed! I'm not sure how Cameron will fit it in. This week we have soccer games every night and practices most nights too, plus baseball season is starting up too so Ian & Jamey have baseball practices mixed in there too. Life is crazy, but I love it. I love being busy with good things, and soccer is a good thing!

Cameron & Micah were disappointed on Tuesday when they lost their game 4-0. They both did a great job, though. Micah was goalie the first half and blocked lots of shots and even had one that I sure wish I'd caught on video because it was an awesome save. They did score on him twice, though, both times after his own teammates kicked the ball into the middle to give the other team an easy shot. The team is still learning. They are also out of shape! All of them were worn out from running across the field. I expect their next game to be much better.

Ian & Jamey won their soccer game 6-2. Both of them did a super job. Ian is a Super Soccer Star. He scored 4 of their goals, one within 20 seconds of the game starting. He is sooooo fast and if he sticks with it, he can steal the ball from anyone and dribble it down and score. After the half, James put him in as goalie (partly because he felt sorry for the other team and didn't want the score to end up being 20-0), but Ian was not happy about it. He doesn't like just standing there -- he wants to score goals! They scored 2 goals on him. Below is a picture of him after Bridger scored a goal. He was faking injury because someone had pushed him over. He didn't get any sympathy from me and was quickly right back up raring to go:

Here he is wishing he was in on the action.
There's Jamey ready to go for the ball

Little Jamey has got quite a kick. He can kick the ball from one end of the field to the other and it hurts when it lands. He wasn't as aggressive as he was last season, and didn't score any of our goals in this last game. I expect that his competitive spirit will be back by the next game, though.

Ian did have some fantastic saves as goalie. He would dive on top of the ball and wouldn't care how many feet could have landed in his face as they all tried to get the ball.

Micah is a great ref. He reffed 2 games this week. He runs with the kids instead of standing there like a bowling pin waiting to be knocked over. He is loud and confident when he makes calls, something that some of our other referees need to work on. He's also really nice to the kids, who are usually pretty young in the games that he refs.

This game was very lop-sided. I think one of the teams only scored one goal while the other one made probably 20-30. Poor little guys!

This was a U6 game. The other game he reffed was U10 (Ian & Jamey's age) and James said he did a great job in that one too. I was at Cameron's band concert that night so I didn't get to go watch. Jamey reffed a U6 game because the ref wasn't able to make it. He was about the same height as the kids on the field, and he was a little bit timid, but it was his first game so that was to be expected. James was there helping him from the sideline. Jamey was sooooo excited to be a ref!

The other 2 games he's reffing are U5 so he should be a little bit taller than the players on the field.