Winning and Never Losing Kids’ Soccer

Calfgrit5 started playing soccer a few weeks ago. His team has practice on Monday evenings, and games on Saturday afternoons. He was interested in trying the sport when we offered it to him several months ago — parents have to sign up their kids months in advance of the season — and he’s having fun with it now that he’s started practicing and playing.

Calfgrit9 played soccer when he was 4 and 5 years old, but he then lost interest in it. We got him on a t-ball team at 6 and 7 years old, but he lost interest in that, too. He now has no interest in any sport. (I’m not much of a sports guy, myself.)

Calfgrit5’s team, the Fusion, won their first game 12-0. Calfgrit5 said after the game that he wasn’t sure he liked playing it. He was disappointed that he didn’t score any goals for his team. I tried to explain the concept of team work, and how those who did score goals can’t do it all by themselves.

The Fusion won their second game 13-1, and Calfgrit5 personally kicked in one of those goals. After that game, he said he was liking soccer, and was excited to play again. Funny how scoring one simple goal, out of a dozen, can change a kid’s attitude.

During the second game, I talked with some of the other parents of our team about how our boys and girls were dominating. I mean, all the kids on both teams looked around the same age and size, and the boy-girl ratio was about even, (if gender matters for a team at that age).

I wondered if our team was really all that great, or were the other two teams really all that bad. During the first game, I hadn’t really noticed, (because I wasn’t looking for anything), but during the second game I saw how we had four really strong players, (3 boys, 1 girl) on our team. The other parents mentioned how those four players had been playing for two previous seasons.

The four ringers weren’t super stars or anything obviously over-the-top, but over the length of the whole game, you could see they knew what they were doing, and they knew how to do what they needed to do. The other kids, on any of the teams were not bad, but they were inexperienced compared to our four best players.

Then our most recent game, this past Saturday, the Fusion won by just 6-2. The other team gave them a real fight for that game. One of our parents expressed concern over how our kids will handle a defeat. “When it happens, it’ll be a tough surprise for them after winning so handily these times.”

Yeah, it’ll probably be a shock. Surely there’s a team in this league that’s as good as ours, (with our four experienced players). When will the Fusion go up against them? How will our kids take a loss after winning so much?

Bullgrit