It's not if you win or lose...

It's if you get a trophy...

Today was Joshua's first soccer game, at 9am. When we first arrived, he was unsure of what to do. A couple of the kids were kicking balls into the goal but Joshua just stood there. I think because at practice, he has his own ball...on the field before the game, his ball wasn't there and he didn't think he should kick someone elses ball. We finally convinced him to kick the ball like the other kids, he did, then he ran into someone and fell down, then he ran to me and cried, then the game started...

Joshua didn't want to play, he didn't want to stand in the middle and wait with his other teammates, he wanted to stay with me. Luckily, there was another kid on Joshua's team who was also holding on to mom's leg. She finally took him by the hand and walked him to the middle, I followed her lead, Joshua followed reluctantly. I could hear the mom giving the pep talk trying to convince her son to play. I took the commentary approach "Look, the blue team has the ball, they are running down the field. Go Purple! Get the ball! Uh oh, look, he fell down. Is he out? No! He gets right back up and keeps going!" Once Joshua saw someone else fall down, I think he felt a little bit better. Then he asks me "Will I get a trophy?" I told him "Not if you don't play." Then, he jumps up and down "I want to play! I want to play!" and we wait for his turn.

It was interesting the way they play kids at this age. They used a much smaller field and played 3 on 3 on two different fields. They don't play any positions or anything, it's pretty much kick the ball into the goal and if someone on the other team is kicking the ball, try to kick it away from them. Once he got on the field, he did as good as most of the kids out there. There were several kids that had evidently played before, but they were all on the other team. And at one point, Coach Cindy was on the field holding one of the kid's hand and running with him...I guess he was a little apprehensive playing and that's the only way they could get him out there...I thought it was terrific that she did that...Anyway, Joshua was reluctant to take the ball away from someone but if they kicked it far enough out, he would run after it and start kicking. And he didn't quiet get the whole out of bounds thing because once, he missed the goal but he kept kicking the ball all the way around behind the goal, came out on the other side and kept right on playing. But hey, he was out there, we were proud of him and cheering him the entire time. And, he actually scored a goal!

I think if they actually kept score, it would have been something like 526 to maybe 3, but hey, all the kids had fun and that's the important thing.