Soccer

I took some photos of Roan's last soccer game.  He's made a lot of progress from game 1, when he refused to step on the field, and even from the middle of the season, when he subbed in, but ran away from the ball, or ran in patterns that no one could make sense of.

The games were 3 on 3, so the kids would learn to play in the triangle formations that soccer is made of.  Not that that ever happened for our team, but that's what we were aiming for.

I grew up playing soccer on the west coast, where the temperature rarely dropped below 60 degrees. I wondered what we would do when it got too cold for shorts and a jersey, and here's the answer - you wear your warm clothes *under* your uniform.  I'm finally understanding why the uniforms are cut so enormously big.

Jay's college friend Kabir was the head coach, and I was the assistant coach. Though Jay ended up taking over my assistant coaching duties when it became clear that Ilan was going to follow me around the entire time and be a nuisance. Kabs had to miss 2 games, and so "Coach Daddy" was in charge.  The first game we got killed - the score was something like 14-0, which is impressive when you consider that the games are only 20 minutes long.  The second game the tables turned.  We were quickly up by 9 goals, and Coach Daddy tried to rein the kids in, making them pass a few times before they could shoot, but after the humiliation of the previous week, our team was out for blood.

We came up with a lot of names for our team, but the one that seemed to stick was the Black Thunders. Roan  misses the Black Thunders, and asks to play soccer all the time now. But the season is over and this week we had our first snow, then the temperature dropped into the low 20s.  The best we can do is dribble around the kitchen.

To everything there is a season.  Soccer, we'll see you again come Spring.