Soccer Practice

Last night was Carter's first soccer practice.  It was from 5:30 to 6:30, the exact same time as preschool orientation for Carter (at 5:30 pm) and Rylan (at 6 pm).  Thankfully Brian was able to attend orientation (though it's killing me just a little that he got to meet the teachers and I didn't) and Missy's husband (Warren) was able to watch Rylan and Luke.

I am a complete dork, but I wrote up an outline for practice.

Missy and I like to be prepared and wanted to make a good first impression with the parents (and not seem like we had no clue what we are doing).  Even though we didn't follow the outline exactly, it helped us never have down time to let the kids get bored (and start picking flowers or something).

We now have 12 boys on the team (one had to switch teams because of a scheduling conflict with practice) and all 12 showed up.  We put name tags on each kid as he showed up because with names like Aidan, Braydon, Brady, Brett, Ben, Caleb, Carson, etc, there was no way we'd learn any names the first practice without them (I think I have about half learned at this point - one more week and I should be good).

Missy's father (Bill) is assisting us and I think we did a pretty good job controlling the boys and also giving a few some one-on-one coaching.  The main thing for us is to not let the boys get bored.  We gave very short explanations of our games/drills and everyone always had a ball and was doing something.  We tried to make it fun but also teach a few skills.  We have a few that want to pick up the ball a lot and a few that didn't want to leave their parents, but most of the boys did (almost) what we told them to and seemed to have fun.

It was super hot so we did water breaks between each game/drill (which each lasted about 5 minutes).  That gave us coaches a minute assess how things were going and what game/drill to do next.  Overall, I think it went well!

I asked Carter on the way home if Missy and I did a good job and he said we did (he can be very honest).  I asked what he liked best and he said all of it.

Rylan apparently had a good time too.  Warren let him and Luke crawl all over Missy's car and also had the DVD player on in there (as well as the air conditioning) so they were content!

Hopefully next week Brian will take a few pictures for me!