Pele? I think not.

Anybody recognize this kid? Well, we hardly do either. Yup, Mitch has started soccer. The beginning of a long and illustrious career....or the beginning of a few games where Mike and I want to stick bags on our heads and we tell him that the season is only 3 games long so that it can mercifully end. Too tough to call at the moment...

Actually, he is doing fine. I mean, he does have some chips stacked against him. He is the youngest one by a good six months on his team. His team, which is supposed to be made up of 4 year olds, is comprised mostly of 5 year olds, and even one six year old, as the directors just sort of glommed kids onto teams willy nilly right before the season started. Way more kids signed up than they anticipated, and there were not enough coaches. They had to hunt everywhere to find some. Mitch's team coach is a super-darling 16 year old high school student...but she knows soccer, not what makes four year olds tick. And, of course, a large mitigating factor against Mitch excelling at soccer...half of his genes come from his uncoordinated clod of a mother.

His first exposure to soccer was a practice, and this is where he actually surprised me. He stood in line, took his turn to kick the ball into the net, and generally participated fairly well, despite words from his coach like, "Mitch you need to dribble. OK, Mitch, trap it!" OK- He has NO idea what these words mean. It would be like saying, "OK, Mitch. State the quadratic theorem, followed by the Preamble to the Constitution." Totally Greek to him. But at practice, he did fine, except for an unfortunate relay race incident when he just could not grasp the concept of waiting until the kid in front of him has finished before his turn to go. But oh well.

But then, we brought him to his first game. The whistle blew to start the game, and we quickly realized that practice just was not enough. All of a sudden, there were nine other kids running, lunging, generally being whirling dervishes, and Mitch...bless his heart, stood still. He basically stood still for most of the game, occasionally watching the action, but rarely attempting to join in.
He just sort of hung around the periphery, not really sure why kids were not lining up and taking turns kicking the ball. What was all this action about? He was sure that he had not signed up for that! He did not really seem to enjoy it, and we could honestly see him sinking into himself as the game wore on.

Well, we made it through the game. Passed out the treat, and headed back home to formulate our plan.

Last week, we had a few family soccer nights, where we would teach him to try to run up and kick the ball away from someone on the other team. That seemed to resonate with him. He is now our defensive specialist. He says that he has no interest in trying to score goals. He will let the other kids on the team do that. He will just try to kick it away from the other team, and if the other team gets a goal he is going to be MAD and not let them do that again! Folks- this is the first glimpse of athletic spirit that we have seen from him, ever, and boy, was his daddy proud.

Well, the next game was much better. Certainly he will not be mistaken for David Beckham, but he did actually stop two goals the other day, one time while yelling"Don't let them get a goal!" Also, toward the end of the game, he actually went into the mass of childhood humanity and we saw his foot MOVE TO TRY TO KICK THE BALL! It was beautiful! And, now he seems to be having more fun. Plus, there were Fritos for a snack. He was diggin' on the Fritos.

Of course, at one point during the game, he did start flapping his arms and running like a robot, but that just goes with the Mitch territory. I, did, however, also observe one boy take his arm out of his jersey sleeve and run around like that for a bit, as well as two boys on Mitch's team that were drawing pictures in the dirt with a stick while they were playing. On second thought, maybe Mitch is on the perfect team. Go Eagles!