Soccer Camp

Day 1 of soccer camp.  I didn't feel like it would be that hard to get ready in the morning, but everything felt like it took longer than normal.  We've been planning for this for a while and yet somehow Grady's shin guards were hiding in the morning.  He finally found them stuffed in one of his toy bins.  We needed extra water, snacks, hats and sunscreen.  I ended up forgetting about a chair for me.

When we got there and checked in, the boys got to enjoy the very best part about soccer camp - getting their own soccer ball with their name written on it in Sharpie marker.  They also got T-shirts.

It's a British Soccer Camp, so all of the coaches are from England.  They all have the great accents and I wondered all morning if the boys understood what they were being told to do.  Grady's group especially looked like they didn't understand the coach most of the time.

Grady was with Coach Dan.  I think I heard that the last camp he worked at, he led the 7-9 year old group.  So switching over to 3-4 year olds was amusing to watch.  At one point, he told the kids to pair off and pick one person to be "number one" and one person to be "number two".  They stared at him and didn't move.  He paired them off himself and sent the pairs to spread out on the field.  Then he started asking who was "number one" and who was "number two".  Again the kids just stared.

Coach Dan set up some games for the kids and he said "wait until I say Go".  The first time, they were able to wait while he said other words too.  When he said Go, they all went.  Then he tried to play the same game again.  When he said "Bananas", everyone started running.  He got everyone back and explained again, then someone had a question or something and Coach Dan's answer involved the word "go", so everyone went again.

He tried to help the kids scrimmage for a couple minutes and when he broke up the the kids into two teams, he sent one team over to stand in front of the goal.  And he told them to pick out a goalie.  He came over after a minute and asked "so who's the goalie" and three of the four kids raised their hands.  You could just see him wanting to slap his forehead or something as he tried to explain that there's one goalie.  

Then he's finally ready to start and says "ok, now when I kick the ball we'll start".  He kicks the ball, and every kid stands on the field and doesn't move.  I don't think he actually explained the idea behind goals and kicking or anything like that.

Grady was a little tired of it and asked to go once or twice, but he survived the whole hour and a half and then happily played with his new ball and played with couple other kids on an iPad until Peter was done with his camp.  He didn't hate it and he seems ok going back tomorrow.

Peter had Coach Sally.  She seemed pretty good with the kids and even had them playing a game where they yelled out the SpongeBob Square Pants theme song before kicking the ball.  These kids being a little older caught on to the idea of what you're supposed to do when playing the game of soccer.

I don't think Peter cared for the drills too much, but he worked on them when he was supposed to.  When Grady was done with his time, Peter started to complain and say he wanted to go.  But after a snack break, he seemed pretty happy to keep participating.

He tended to be on the outskirts of the group attacking the ball.  And it was funny to see him constantly jumping around as the ball moves back and forth.  Almost like he was always trying to calculate where the ball would be next and he was going to move in that direction to get it.  He said his favorite part of the day was when he got to play goalie.  I think he liked getting the chance to hold the ball and drop kick it back into play.

Luckily, it wasn't too hot today.  There's no shade on the soccer field and it's hard for me to understand that no one wears a hat.  I had the boys in hats when we got there and felt like we were getting funny looks.  The boys took off their hats before they started playing and didn't put them back on at all.  At least they had sunscreen on.

Peter's still possibly wanting to play soccer in the fall, but we'll see how much he likes it after a full week.  Not that he'll stop liking it, but will he really be interested in continuing to play that many days in a row.  Grady talks about wanting to play basketball.  (Which I really don't know where that came from, because it's not like we watch it or play it or anything like that.)