Sophie's 1st Soccer Team

This fall we signed Sophie up for her first soccer team.  We got her on the same team as another little boy in our ward.  His dad was actually the coach and did a great job.  She had such a cool uniform with red flames on the sleeves.  Her team was called the "Fire Frogs".

The soccer season lasted just over a month, but it was a pretty intense schedule for such little kids.  Sophie had practice once a week and games twice a week.

Sophie really enjoyed practice.  She had been playing a lot at home with Daddy and Aspen, which translated well at practice.  She liked having her own ball and not having to compete with the other kids.

 

Her first game was pretty much a flop.  None of the kids had any idea what they were doing.  Sophie basically spent the entire game watching a girl on the sideline doing cartwheels.  But I wanted her to have a positive experience, so we took her out for ice-cream afterward to celebrate anyway.

The rest of the games were a little better.  She would at least follow the pack of kids around the field and periodically kick it if it accidentally crossed her path.  She was really good at throw ins and other times the ball was given directly to her.  But she was not aggressive and didn't pursue the ball in any way.

Until the last game...Isaac had to miss this game because he was out of town at a conference.  Sophie was amazing this game.  I don't know what happened, but finally something clicked and she became aggressive.  Shortly after the game started she got the ball and kicked it down the field and scored a goal.  I think she was so excited she scored that she wanted the ball from then on.  She then became a true competitor and would steal the ball from the other team.  She was in the middle of the pack actually trying to get the ball instead of floating around the outside.  She ended up scoring 2 goals that game and had a great time.  I called Isaac from the game to tell him what was going on (because he was just sitting in the airport).  I told him how amazing she was and he didn't believe me at all.  I promised that I wasn't joking, but nothing I said would convince him, so I took some video.  When he saw it in his hotel room he was floored that I wasn't joking and amazed with how competitive she was.

Unfortunately all that happened on her last game, so we are hoping she will remember how great it was and have fun playing when it starts again in the spring.