Soccer season again

The boys are playing Upward soccer again this year. We missed the first 2 practices, since we were in Ohio, but they went on Thursday night, and they had their first games on Saturday.

This year, Nathan, Luke, and Caleb are all playing. By the end of last season, Caleb was very eager to play, to the point of wearing an old uniform of Luke's to the games, and playing soccer with Jonathan during the games. But since he doesn't turn 6 until Nov. 5, he is still technically in kindergarten this year, and the 4-5 league plays their games at 9:00 on Saturdays. If this were the only game, that would be doable, but with Luke playing his game at 10:15, and Nathan's game starting at 11:30 (or later if the other games don't end on time), then you can see that we would be spending the entire morning at soccer, and I just didn't think that would work. So this summer I asked the Upward director if he could possibly put Caleb in the 1st-3rd grade league, since he just missed the cut-off, and as the third brother, he is used to playing with older boys. The director said he would wait until after evaluations, and if it looked like Caleb was skill-wise at a first grade level, then he would put him on Luke's team. Well, Caleb was at the low end of the first grade scores, but high for kindergarten, so the directer put him on Luke's team. Yay!

Except that Caleb was not all that thrilled with the news. Because I didn't want to disappoint him if he wasn't able to play this year, I never made a big deal about it or really even talked much about it to him. I just told him to do the evaluations along with the other boys, which he did, but Bob said that he wasn't that into it then, which probably led to his scoring lower than I expected.

After we got back from our trip and the first day of practice drew near, Nathan and Luke were quite excited. Caleb did not want to play soccer. Ack! I asked for a special favor, which I was granted, and now he doesn't even want to play soccer?! Talk about hurting the team! I chastised myself severely for signing him up--I should just have waited until he was 6--and also for not talking with him about it before the evaluations.

So on Thursday, I was quite nervous as to how the whole season was going to go. Also, Bob has the last class of this 4 class certification program this semester, and it happens to be on Thursday nights, so it is going to be me taking them and dealing with them the whole season, which didn't relieve my fears at all.

Caleb did like getting his cleats and soccer stuff on, and he went off with Luke with no fuss. Luke had a hard time believing Caleb was actually on his team, LOL. I watched the practice from the playground, and it looked like Caleb did just fine. He's not even the smallest boy on the team, and he certainly wasn't the worst player! Afterward, he said he did have fun, and their coach is really nice and encouraging. He loved getting his Upward uniform shirt and water bottle, so that went a long way, LOL.

Saturday it was interesting to watch the interplay between Caleb and Luke in the game. Sometimes they were both out on the field at the same time, in which case I ttought Caleb hung back a little and let Luke play where he should have been. But when Luke wasn't playing, he was more aggressive. I'm sure there are all sorts of psychological applications as relating to siblings there, LOL. Their team won something like 5-0, which Luke scoring, which made them both very happy. Luke is actually pretty good at soccer, so another reason I had no initial qualms about asking to have Caleb put with him was the thinking that Luke would more than make up for any shortcomings that Caleb might bring to the team. But I don't think Caleb will be a shortcoming at all, and I'm looking forward to seeing him develop his on-field confidence this season!

Nathan's team also did well, although I didn't see as much of that game. It ended up tied 0-0. A lot of his friends, either from church or from the homeschool co-op, are on his team, so I think it is a great group of boys. The reason I didn't see much of the game was that, basically, I was melting from the heat. Midway in Luke's game, I had retreated back under the pavilion with the girls and Jonathan to escape the sun. I could still see the game, especially because Grace was napping in her carseat. By the second game, however, Grace was up and needing to be nursed (nothing like nursing a hot, sweaty baby to really make you feel the heat!), and Anna was tired, hot, and extremely crabby. So with wriggly, sticky girls all over me, I did not get to really watch the game. Plus, I was so hot even in the shade, I could not imagine actually running around in a synthetic jersey, and watching the players made me feel faint, LOL.

As soon as the game was done (close to 1:00), we leapt into the car, cranking up the AC. We went home and immediately all took showers in as quick a time as possible. Ahhhhhhh. Hopefully next weekend will not be so unmercifully hot. Then we rushed off to Ed's birthday party, where we told the boys not to even go outside, for fear they might suffer heat stoke or something, LOL. Talking to Christine at the party (whose boys also played that morning), she had told her boys the same thing!