Soccer, again.

Teresa had her last soccer game this past week. Her whole season was pretty interesting. She did pretty well the first few games. After being a bird for a large part of the first game, she did a lot better the second time, and actually participated quite a bit. She wasn't a soccer prodigy or anything, but she kept up with the pack and got a few chances to kick the ball. And she had a ton of fun while doing it.

Then we had two completely awful games. She would go out on the field and fall down and start crying. She was super whiny the whole time and just walked around with her arms crossed saying "humph" the whole time, and refused to participate at all.  Once she started acting that way for a second game I told her she could either play like she was supposed to, or we would go home. She kept up the attitude, so we packed everything up and headed home in the middle of the game. By the time we got in the car and were ready to leave she was promising up and down that she would play without an attitude if we would let her go back.

We went back.

She fell down on the field and started crying and refusing to play.

So we left again. After a few serious discussions (and we might have made her throw away all her soccer stuff) she decided that she would give soccer one more try. We let her get her stuff out of the trash and came up with a plan for her next game.

We spent the next week watching videos on YouTube of little girls playing soccer. I would point out when one of the kids would fall down, and just get back up without crying, or how the other team would try to get the ball from the kid who had it. She was super pumped for her game all week and couldn't stop talking about being a soccer star.

I was so nervous when we got there last Saturday. Let me make it clear that I wasn't expecting her to be the most super awesome soccer player ever. I just wanted her to actually try and participate, and I knew that she would have fun if she would just try it. And we made sure she knew that too.

And then the game started. And she was amazing. She seriously did so, so awesome the whole game. She was running around the whole time. She always knew where the ball was and was trying to get it. She kicked the ball a ton. We were so, so impressed with her! And she was having such. a. blast. the whole time. She did start to get tired toward the end, and came over to tell us she wanted to sit down, but we just told her it was almost over, and to keep playing and she totally did! We were so excited for her. She was so excited for herself. I seriously could go on for another few paragraphs about how fabulous she was. She just was so energetic the whole time and she tried so hard the whole game. There was one super fast little guy on the other team, and a couple of times he got the ball and was just flying down the field ahead of everyone, but T just kept after him the whole way, instead of getting all grumpy about it like the previous games. She was awesome. She was so, so awesome. She talked about it for the rest of the day and kept telling us that she was a soccer stars. Not a star, a 'stars' she would correct us.

She did pretty well for this last game, too. Not as amazing as the game before, but still pretty good. She'd had a rough night before, so she was a little grumpy, but still participated for most of it and tried really hard. I'm so proud of her, she really tried so hard the last two games and had such a fun time. She was so cute, once after kicking the ball (way outside of the boundaries, the coaches had to chase her down so she didn't go in the parking lot) she threw her little arms up and said "I scored a gold!". We didn't bother correcting her.


Marc made this little video of the game, T wanted to have a video like the ones we'd watched on the computer. There's a little bit of Nora at the end, too.

soccer from Tara Milligan on Vimeo.

And some pictures:

Me and the T before her last game:

And Nora, too.

The little orange team we played this week was so cute, and pretty much the only team that didn't cheat. We couldn't believe how much cheating went on in 3/4 year old soccer. One team had a bigger girl that would stand on the sidelines until her teammates got the ball close to the goal, then she would run out and kick it in for them. The team we played the day we went home early used a goalie for most of the game, which is against the rules. And the team they played the day of T's awesome game was the most frustrating. The coaches from each team also acted as the refs, and the coach from the other team kept conveniently getting in the way of our team when they would have the ball - she would stand right in front of them and not even attempt to move out of the way. She completely blocked T from scoring at least twice. Somehow all the other coaches were able to ref the game without getting in the kids way...Anyway, I just thought it was super ridiculous. But the orange team was cute, there's no official score kept, but they definitely won. 

And I know this is already the world's longest blog post, but I had to include this picture of Nora with the ball. She was so cute the whole game, she would cheer for Teresa "go Teresa, kick, kick" over and over, it was adorable. Nora loves to play soccer, as well, and seems to have a fair bit of natural talent at it. She can kick the ball the whole length of the field and right into the goal without messing up at all. She was itching to get in there and play at every game.