2028 US Olympic Soccer Team Here We Come!

Well this weekend Greg and I officially became soccer parents! For awhile Morgan has been wanting to try soccer for awhile and since she gave up dance we decided to enroll her in the Carmel Dad's Soccer Program. Soccer seems to be big up here in Carmel and we had heard a lot of good things about the program so we were pretty excited about our first game! Last weekend Greg took Morgan to Soccer Village to get all her gear and since then she has been wanting to wear the shorts and play with ball pretty much non stop.

We walked to the field yesterday (because the field is right down the road!) and finally figured out where our field was. It was mass craziness with tons of teams playing, practicing and people coming and going. Morgan met her coach and got her jersey and soccer socks. She is #2!

Morgan's team is the Pre-K team and is co-ed. I think she might be one of the youngest on the team because they are mostly 4 and 5 year olds. They start off with a short practice which consists of a little kicking, throwing and general craziness. Here is Morgan getting her ball to go line up with her team.

Here she is lined up with her teammates and listening to a little advice from her coach Raphael!

As a side note- see #8, he is huge! He has to be the oldest kid on the team and the entire time he dominated the game!

Morgan liked practice! And I was even able to get a little video of her practicing her skills. Look how good she was kicking the ball and getting it down to the goal.

After practice they split up into two groups and play three on three on two different mini sized fields. The coach asked for a volunteer to help on the second field (which basically consisted of making sure the kids didn't get too sidetracked) so Greg volunteered to help on Morgan's field. Since she was pretty good in practice and seemed to be enjoying herself we figured the game would be no problem...right??? WRONG!

She actually did okay on the first play. She helped kick it to start and ran down the field and then at some point she either got pushed, or fell (we aren't really sure) but she started to cry.

Once she started to cry she ran to Greg who was still on the field. He tried his best to make sure she wasn't hurt and he gave her a little pep talk and she seemed ready to keep going.

But then the next play started and instead of running down field, she ran behind Greg to hide.

Then after awhile she just sat down in the middle of the field and cried.

We both tried to help her but she pretty much spent most of the game in tears. She was able to continue to try and get out there and while she was I was able to get a little bit of her game on video.

We aren't really sure what the problem was. She was so excited! I think it was partly her being tired, she was with all new people, it was cold and she really, really, really wanted to score and couldn't. We had a lot of talks about not quiting and just trying to go out there and have fun and she seemed to get it. Later that night she did say she had a good time so it must not have been an experience that scarred her for life!