The Green Leaves

Becca’s soccer team named themselves The Green Leaves. We thought maybe they’d try to be The Green Gators or something equally vicious. But no, they’re leaves. Falling leaves. Literally.

The first game they lost 4-1. This last game…well, I lost track of how many goals The Gray Hotshots scored. I didn’t lose track of how many the Leaves scored because we didn’t score any. Becca almost scored one at the beginning of the game. And another girl almost scored one at the end of the game. Unfortunately, almost doesn’t count in soccer.

Becca played goalie for the last 6 minutes. She did great.

She blocked about 7 goal attempts. The only one she didn’t block went into the goal after ricocheting off the goal post. It would have been hard for Mia Hamm to block. (She’s a soccer player, right?) Shows how much I know.

I do however, know that this little Gray Hotshot much prefers picking grass to playing soccer:

Kindergarten soccer is interesting because once a child “gets” something, they tend to just do that one thing. For example, one little girl on the Leaves really caught on to that if the other team is threatening to score a goal, you can kick the ball out of bounds to prevent them from scoring. So every time she can kick the ball, she kicks it out of bounds. On purpose. It’s hilarious. To a point. And then. Well. It’s not so funny. I’m glad I’m not the coach. The coach is always saying things like: “Hey, great kick! Next time, try kicking it even farther down the field, okay? Great job! Give me 5, kiddo!” And then she takes a deep breath, giggles, smiles, and continues coaching. She’s awesome.

Kindergarten soccer is interesting because there’s this herd-mentality. The coaches do a great job of setting all the kids into their positions, forwards, defenders, right side, left side, middle, etc. They get everybody all set up, blow the whistle, the ball enters the field and WHOOSH! In a flash every single kid that cares is in a herd around the ball. There are a few kids who are looking at the clouds or watching the bug walk over their shoe that don’t get involved in the herd. And then, a minute later, as the herd and the ball move around the field, the ball goes out of bounds and the coaches start all over again. Set all the kids into place, blow the whistle, and WHOOSH! Over and over and over. The whole thing cracks me up. I love Kindergarten Soccer. It’s especially nice that there is no scorekeeper.