Soccer

 

Yesterday was Beatrice's last soccer session until they start again in January, so I thought I'd use this opportunity to post some photos.

  

Watching Beatrice play soccer has been one of the highlights of the last year.  As I have joked before on Facebook and elsewhere, Beatrice is not exactly a natural at soccer.  In fact, she's not very coordinated, she doesn't understand (or care to understand) the rules and aims of the game, and she spends a lot of her time falling over, running in the wrong direction, or talking to the coach about random, unrelated things like chipmunk hibernation.  At one point, all the other kids were running across the field, each kicking a soccer ball forward as they ran, and she actually started running backwards.

But she's always enthusiastic, confident, and cooperative - whatever sport she's playing, she loves it.  She gets a ton of exercise (they basically run back and forth across the field for thirty minutes). And I get a chance to sit on a picnic blanket in the evening at sunset and relax. So everyone wins.

I should also add a few pictures here from Arthur's short soccer career.  Unlike Beatrice, Arthur is actually quite good at soccer - he can kick, stop the ball, and make goals.  But he's also unwilling to listen to the coach, he's very lazy about running (or walking), and frequently wanders off or just lies down in the grass to protest.

 

  


Stopping the ball



Taking yet another break

In fact, during his brief stint in soccer before I pulled him out, he actually requested that I carry him back and forth across the field, only setting him down on the grass so that he could kick goals.  Seriously.


Arthur's preferred position, watching the game while eating kettle corn

So we stopped taking Arthur to soccer, though we may try again in a year or so.  Until then, though, we've found that Arthur's true passion is his dance class, but I'll leave those photos for another time.