Wednesday, March 19, 2014

SOCCER DAD

It has been a minute since I last checked in. Shiloh has matriculated into the little girl stage quite nicely, thank you. She can't go anywhere unless she has her assortment of dolls and stuffed animals. When I try to put a three object limit for church, for example, she looks at me like I'm nuts. So then it gets into , "you can bring three, and take one in with you". She'll haggle me up to two, thoughfully explaining how the one she would bring would be lonely and have no one top play with. Somehow that always seems to make perfect sense to me and so two it is.

Our latest adventure has been a five and under (5U) soccer league near the house. Same league her older brother Cyrus played in when  he was close to her age. I remember wishing I could call the shots as the head coach and how differently my approach as a "former professional athlete" would be vastly superior to that of the perpertrating stepdad who donned the Head Coach golf shirt.

Be careful what you wish for. Even though I checked the "assistant  coach" box on the application I was of course named as the first ever coach of the Pink Fairies. When deciding on a team name, the first suggestion was undiscernable and not wanting to put undue spotlight attention on the five year old girl, I asked for any more suggestions. One of the girls blurted out FAIRIES. Her mom threw the Pink part in for good measure.

Let me go back to that application process. You would think I was applying for NORAD clearance with all the quizzes, test and handbook studying required. About two days into it I was about to bag it. Coupled with Commissioner Tanika constanly checking up on me to see if I had completed the certification. I mean I get it, you want to  make sure coaches are well versed in child abuse, concussion awareness, skill development, and all the rest. But I kind've thought it would be a roll the balls out and let them have at it kind of experience.

 I worked with Shiloh for a good month before the league actually started. You can find pretty much anything you want on youtube. She was really good and I thought could dominate her first time playing soccer. What I didn't realize was that she was one of the youngest girls at four and a couple of them had played in organized leagues before. So they ran circles around my little girlie girl at first. But she is slowly catching on to the focus it takes to compete successfully. My first big coaching decision is to find a way to break her and my niece up at practices and games. They're dancing and singing and chasing butterflies. Everything but trying to kick that dang soccer ball...

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