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The Purple Dragons

As I may or may not have told you already, all three of my boys play soccer. The younger 2 boys play on the same team in the local recreation soccer league. Well, several weeks before the season began; they called and asked me to be the coach for their team. I told them there was just no way I would have the time, however in the end, they roped me into it anyway. In the beginning, we wound up playing our first game, and I didn’t even know the boys names or how they played soccer. Two of our players had never played soccer before and that made it really interesting. It actually turns out that the team was naturally pretty good on that first game day, which was kind of exciting. Well, at practice on the following week, I realized that pretty much all the boys I had on the team were high energy, low attention span, so our first two practices I just worked on trying to get the boys to listen, but that really didn’t go so well. I have an assistant coach, but he really is just a figure head who shows up when he can and really most of the responsibility lies with me. Well, we lost our first 2 games and our practices were out of control, so I called a friend of mine who not only is on the board of the soccer league, but is also a U12 boy’s travel coach and has many years of coaching experience. He came out and showed me some drills and games we could play at our practice. He also gave me some tips, and the practices have been going a little better ever since. I also purchased a whistle, which with these boys was a necessary item to have handy.

We tied our next two games, which I thought was pretty good. Every week I was stressing over my line up and trying to get everyone a chance to play forward and take turns sitting out, and then I truly found the line up that works for us. Well, we only have one game left plus our tournament, but we have won our last two games. The boys are finally learning to pass and communicate on the field. They are doing a little more thinking and backing each other up. Quite honestly, I can’t believe how much better they are playing. Yes, that’s right I am now the proud mama of these boys and am really surprised that I have been able to get any sort of compliance from them at all. Practices are starting to get a little whilly nilly again, but I will reel those boys in next week. I finally have them playing decent soccer while having fun, and I have finally figured up a line up that seems to be really working for all. I am really excited to see how we can do in this tournament in two weeks. I know it will be a lot of fun for the boys and I will have a blast as well. Go Purple Dragons!

Posted on Sunday, May 11, 2008 9:00 PM by Carol Ann