Soccer girl.

A condensed version of Anna's first ever soccer season in AYSO.

She played in the U6 (4-5 year olds) league.

They play three on three without a goalie,

on a field smaller than a basketball court.

Game 1: Before the season started, we'd caught two frogs at the soccer fields.

The first was at evaluations.

The second was while waiting for our game to start.

We made her mad because she didn't want to put her shin pads on.

She wanted to catch more frogs.

First thing we do at every game is warm up.

We touch the ball to our toes to stretch,

roll the ball around with our feet and play "tick-tock".

Then we play some games.

Post office, monster in the middle, red light-green light, OUCH!

(kick the ball into the coach, who yells "Ouch!" when hit).

Our favorite is body part dribble -

they dribble around the field and when I yell a body part,

they have to touch that part to the ball.

Their favorite part was "bottom".

Before each game starts, we check to make sure

everyone has shin pads and proper cleats.

Then we flip a coin and choose goals to "shoot into".

Then it's time to play.

Go Tigers!

At this age, it's "Herd Ball".

Wherever the ball is, most of the kids are clustered around it.

Of course, it does't help that we have a tendency

to kick the ball out of bounds a lot.

It gets a little boring waiting for everything to get set up again.

Especially since no one really knows where to go.

Anna usually plays pretty hard, but poops out pretty quickly.

Good thing the quarters are only 5 minutes long.

My favorite quote of the season:

"Daddy, I smiled at those boys and girls,

but they didn't share the ball with me!"

We do get our feelings hurt when the ball gets taken away-

especially by our own teammates.

It's more like 1 vs. 5 than 3 vs. 3 in a 4 year old's mentality.

See how happy we are that Brianna scored?!

We do have fun playing with the ball on the field before the games start.

And every once in a while, we get the "breakaway ball"

and take it down for a score!

"I scored two goals tonight, daddy!"

Daddy is so proud of how we played!

I didn't get a shot of today's goal, but it was the best yet.

She was really scrappin' for it.
And she did it all on her own!