Names, again

[flea]

Born: Teagan (a girl). Big brothers are Declan and Eoin (pronounced, basically, "Owen.") No, they aren't Welsh, but Canadian of mixed Anglo-Celtic descent (as far as I know).

On Casper's soccer team, ages 3-preK, which in practice seems mostly like older 3s and 4s. Names have only been heard aloud
Girls: Jessica, Caitlin, Ny, and Casper.
Boys: Amir, Ali, Scotty, Jimmy, Grady, Santana.

Casper is kind of one of the Special Snowflakes of the team. But a big percentage of the kids have had some sort of crying meltdown or playing strike at one point or another (Caitlin, Jimmy, Ali (although only after getting accidentally hit in the face with a ball)). Casper has not cried, but does have a strong tendency to wander off the field, sit down, climb into the net, and approach the coach with irrelevant questions and informative statements. Grady is also somewhat prone to distraction. Amir and Jessica are probably the best players (Jessica's dad is the coach, and Amir seems to be one of the older ones).

We need to try and hit the sporting good store and maybe get a little practicing in before Saturday's 9am game. I tried explaining the concept of the game in the car on the way home. I forsee more right field wanderings on Saturday.

Comments

[serrana.livejournal.com]

I think in K-league soccer, any time they're not all sitting on each other (and/or the ball) and all the kids are on the field when they're supposed to be, it's a success.

Running in the same direction at the same time may or may not happen by the end of the season. I wouldn't plan on it. *G*

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

Yes, the coach told me he has three goals for the season: they kick the ball; they kick the ball in the right direction; they stop kicking the ball when they cross the white lines. Eight weeks might be enough to get that down, since they all can pretty much already do step 1.

[serrana.livejournal.com]

Getting it in the right direction is hard! Because it changes directions in the middle, and a person gets confused. ;>

My dad and I had one of our more challenging life experiences when he coached my K-league soccer team. He never coached again (though he was a referee for many years) and I refused to play team sports until well into middle school. *sigh* Oh, well. Poor Dad, the man spent more than a decade trying to find a sport I'd be good at, and completely failing.

[dxmachina.livejournal.com]

I'll spare you the multiple rants I have about organized sports for kids.

and approach the coach with irrelevant questions and informative statements

Another genetic marker identified...

[katie-m.livejournal.com]

Eoin (pronounced, basically, "Owen.")

Lovely people, I'm sure, but that's just mean.

[jarsy.livejournal.com]

Eoin's the Irish spelling of Owen. It's our 'John'. There were at least three in my class in school.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

My Irish friend Joanne has a sister Aoife. Fine names, just completely unpronounceable to Americans. See also: Siobhan, and I am sure many others.

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

I would actually be interested to hear your perspective on organized sports for kids. This is sort of an experiment for us, driven on my part by a desire to get Casper doing something more gross-motor (she has excellent fine-motor skills, and pretty weak gross, pretty much clearly genetic), get more exercise and spend more time outdoors, and, I'll admit it, an attempt to have her doing something that seems to be part of a "normal" childhood. I mean, she got weird and geeky parents and genes; I feel like we have to strive for normalcy. That's my issue, and I am trying not to project it onto her.

I am of multiple minds on sports in general. I think sports should be recreational only, not part of the educational system at the high school or college levels. I think a good sports team can help a child learn about teamwork, sportsmanship, and trying hard at something that doesn't come easy if the child in question had me as a parent. A bad sports team can reinforce mean-spirited competitiveness and give a sense of failure to the kids who aren't physically gifted.

But I know you have coached sports, and probably have a lot more perspective than I do.

[dxmachina.livejournal.com]

I just spent the last two hours trying to come up with an answer for you, but I kept running off on ranty tangents. I will put together something on the negatives at some point.

Here are a couple of the good things. One thing is that if Casper does develop any sort of coordination at all, that combined with 98% percentile height will have future coaches drooling, no matter what sport she tries. You can teach a lot of things, but it's very hard to teach someone to be tall.

The other is something I noticed over the years of coaching women's sports. When I started coaching women's soccer in the early eighties, I experienced a bit of culture shock compared to coaching men's softball. Every male softball player thinks he's a better player than he really is. Often he thinks he's WAY better. What surprised me when I first started coaching women was that more often than not my players had the exact opposite reaction. The women on my team tended to think they were worse players than they really were. It was strange and frustrating. The hardest part of my job was trying to convince these women how good they actually were. We're not talking about underachievers, either. They were almost all in grad school at the time, most of them in the sciences.

I think a lot of that attitude had to do with the fact that most of them had never played much in the way of team sports before, apart from a few who'd played field hockey. The soccer boom was just starting. Rhode Island never even had high school soccer for girls until a couple years after I started coaching. What I noticed over the years was that the women who joined the team later, The ones who played soccer as kids and then in high school and college, were much more aware of and confident in their abilities. (There were even a few who thought they were WAY better than they really were.) How much of that confidence translates to real life I don't know, but it certainly can't hurt.