First Soccer Experience

We woke Saturday morning with minimal expectations of a soccer game. Much to our surprise, the game was on! So we kicked things into gear to get ready to go. In reality, it wasn't much different than a preschool day or a Sunday school day, just different gear. Oh my goodness the gear! We were not organized and clearly we needed to be.

We arrived at the fields and found a great parking spot. Carie and the girls hopped out and headed to the fields while Spencer and I loaded up and transported our gear.

Their regular coach, whom we haven't met yet, wasn't able to be there so one of the Dad's was deemed coach for the day. He was awesome! He was such a positive guy to be around. The only rough transition of the morning was figuring out how things worked. As it turns out, they play 3 on 3 which left the remaining 3 players from each team with a break on the sidelines. A break that is needed after they've been running their tails off! But to start out with, Abby wasn't sure what was going on and was clearly feeling left out. We quickly figured out what was going on and explained how it all worked. It wasn't long before it was her turn to play and everything was immediately better.

Both girls jumped right in without hesitation and they looked like they had a blast. I think we were both pleasantly surprised at how well they jumped right into the mix of things, how well they played the game given no prior experience, and just how much fun they had. It was awesome watching them have so much fun. It was fun watching them cheer for each other as they took turns playing.

For most of the game they took turns being on the field, but for a short period they played together. Here is Ellie congratulating Abby.

We knew going into it that they were the newbie’s on the team. It sounds like the other 4 girls played together during the last fall season. A couple of the girls are approaching a year older than Abby & Ellie and they really appeared to have some experience. One of the other girls didn't seem to want to play. Her mom shared with us that she was like that all last season. They weren't going to sign her up for the spring season, but then she asked to play again. Her mom was incredibly nice and really welcomed us, which was wonderful. We had some interesting conversations!

After their game we had a bit of a break before meeting up again, at a different location, for soccer pictures.

Status: Game 1 under our belt, looking forward to many more. Soccer pictures complete!