Soccer Fun

A couple of months ago, when we were looking at the summer schedule of the city offered classes for toddlers, my husband was very excited to see soccer listed. He has been waiting for the past four years to watch the world cup with his son. And this class presented a great opportunity to get our little one through the basics so he wouldn't be bored watching the finals of his dad's favorite sport.

Since it was essentially the beginners parent-and-me class, there were a couple of coaches to direct the parents on when to get their kids pass the ball, dribble etc., and dads (or moms) were supposed to engage their kids and make them practice the basic lessons. And in the final session of the 6 week course, a game would be played with the kids divided into two teams.

I wasn't sure if I could get good pictures of my baby on the day of the game. So, as a precaution I wanted to get some decent ones in the practice session. Since I had missed his first two sessions, it was high time for me (as any mom) to get the pictures of my little sports star on the field. Armed with my camera, I accompanied them on the sunny Saturday morning the past week to the city's sports club and was all set to click away every minute of his half-hour class.

It was such a cute sight with a bunch of 3-4 year olds with their colorful jerseys running around learning to kick the ball and not to forget their dads following them trying hard to get their kids to listen J

Since my husband was doing the running after, my job was just to click and watch the antics of all the kids around. And I had such fun doing just that. Each little one had his/her own style. A couple of them were pretty good following the orders by doing the perfect kicks and passes. One of them ran in the opposite direction right into another team's practice and the poor dad followed his kid apologizing to the other interrupted parents. And there was one who held the ball to his chest going in circles laughing all the while. Imagine the dad behind! There was a little girl got tired just 10 minutes into the class and ran to her mom was watching. For the next 20 minutes, both the parents were busy trying to persuade their daughter to step on the field.

And our peanut was awesome for the first 15 minutes really listening to his dad and kicking and passing the ball perfectly. But then, for some reason he had enough of seriousness and started having fun by being our little drama-king.
He would purposefully fall every other minute trying to kick the ball and immediately checking for any bruises on his elbows/knees and of course there would be none. Else he would kick the ball and plonk himself on the ground sighing. My husband later commented that he was probably trying to mimic the theatrics of the Brazil team :-)
Well, guess it is okay as long as he is enjoying and hopefully learns something out of his 6 week-session.
As for me, it was great watching all these itty-bitty tots having fun with their very own sense of style and the dads well, just being dads J