Max's Soccer Game #83

I've honestly lost track. Max has been playing soccer almost year round since he was four years old. when we moved to Virginia he started playing indoor soccer too, so who knows how many games he has under his belt. Regardless, he played his second game of the current season and his team really showed up for the game. They won their first game after only one practice, and half the team doesn't know each other. Seems that the magical one game and two practices did the trick - they were a scoring machine - all of them.



The other cool thing is that Tom is once again coaching Max's team. His focus has always been on teaching the kids a love of the game, as well as teaching them the basic skills. It's nice to see that the kids are having fun AND winning. Good reinforcement for both the kids and the parents! This season they are refereed, the score is kept, and they are ranked. After the third game we will all have rankings and will play a bracket type tourney at the end of the season. Weird to think that we'll add the competitive part in this go round as we've never had that in the past (well, except for the one coach who told the 5 year olds that they LOST by a score of 12 to 3, and that they'll do better next week - terrible, TERRIBLE way to teach them a love of the game). Anyway, Tom has struck a nice balance between encouraging and acknowledging the win and getting back to the idea of the love of the game and the skills. Good job man, good job.