Order Horizon

Mid-week soccer report

Alice had her first soccer game this evening. At her age they don’t have separately scheduled games but just have them during practice. This makes pictures much more challenging because it’s almost dusk by game end but because it’s my little sweety pumpkins I tried anyway.

Alice started on the sideline but was put in after the first period (I think they had 5 or 6 periods, I am not sure how that worked). She played goalie for a while but then was unleashed on the field. At first she just stood around, apparently amazed at being in a game but after a bit of … encouragement from her loving father she started running around like she had crazed squirrels in her shorts, the same as the other kids were doing.

Alice had two good runs, almost scoring on both of them although I am not sure that she has really grasped the whole “goal line” concept. Afterward she said that the game was “very fun” and “great!” so it seems likely that she will be willing to play again.

In “small town notes”, Alice has met a new friend in kindergarten who is now her best friend. Alice does not, however, remember her name. Alice did recognize her when she turned out to be a player on the other team. She also turned out to be the younger sister of a girl who played on Corwin’s soccer team back in the day. We talked to the family but Alice still doesn’t know her name.

I am not sure what the final score was. The scoring and officiating was rather relaxed because it was hard enough to keep the kids actually playing. A coach and a parent stopped own goals at one point to keep the ball in play. Only half the field was used and the goals were marked by cones which would frequently be knocked over by the ball. Whether that was a score or not I have no idea. There were lots of excursions outside the boundaries. At one point a boy on Alice’s team got control of the ball and drove upfield to his own goal. He figured this out before scoring and then drove all the way back to the other goal before kicking it out of bounds. One girl thought she’d scored because she kicked it in to the official goal on the side of the playing field. The first score was about 10 seconds in when the other team kicked off and Alice’s team didn’t seem to realize play had started so the kicker just ran up and booted the ball in to the goal. Things got started after that.

There was a lot of shoving in the game and not just across teams. Several players on both teams wanted the ball and should push other players out of the way regardless of team. At one point a player actually grabbed the ball and curled up around it to keep it from a teammate. Another child would fall down and cry on a regular basis, sometimes because he was pushed but other times for no apparent reason. His mom tried to convince him to sit out and calm down but he refused.

I did like the cascading failures. At least twice, possibly more, one kid would fall, trip, or be shoved which would knock over another kid, who would knock over another kid, like a set of dominoes or bowling pins.

Overall a good time for Alice.

Alice’s friend is the girl in red