Whitney had a really fun soccer season! Her best yet, and she has decided she really loves soccer, which of course we are thrilled about. We love when any of our kids love something enough to work hard at it, whether or not they are super talented!!
Eric coached her team, with my help :) and it was fun. The city mixed up some of the names and thought some girls were boys though, and so we ended up with a team of 4 boys and 6 girls! All of the other teams had only 3 or 4 girls. Not to be prejudiced, but we were at a bit of a disadvantage! Our first few games we hardly got the ball past midfield, except the few times Whitney or this other girl Lyvia managed to make a breakaway. Whitney scored in one of these early games, luckily when Grandma, Grandpa and Kurtis were there!
This is her in the red socks about to score:
and again one second later:
It was awesome.
Here's Kurtis and Owen playing off on another field.
And Maris taking a rare reading break during a game.
Usually she was doing this during all the games!! Little dribbling/throwing/chasing cutie! And whenever there was a break in the game she seemed to know and would run out onto the field with her ball and try to play. The girl loves to play with a ball more than anything, it is adorable and so exciting to us. :)
Owen loved to play during the games too; he wore his cleats and shin guards to every game, and his soccer jersey to most! He has had WAY more practice than his sisters had before they started playing soccer, so we are excited for him to get to play next year!
Whitney was by far the most aggressive player on her team. She would go for every ball and beat everyone to it! Things get really clogged up on those small fields playing 7 on 7 though, so she could hardly get it out of the crowd of players usually. If it was ever out in the open she would get it for sure, especially if someone on the other team was also going for it. But then she would have to get past 3 or 4 people from the other team, with no one on her team to pass to or to support her becasue they weren't fast/aggressive enough/she's not a skilled passer. But no one ever got past her on defense, and she's not a bad goalie either but Eric mostly convinced her to not take a turn at goalie because we needed her out on the field. :) We learned early on that if she starts at forward she gets winded quickly and then cries because she can't breathe because she's working so hard. So Eric always had her start on defense and then move her up once she got warmed up.
Here she is trying to get out of the crowd, in red socks.
focused on the ball.
love this sequence of 4 shots of her.
1. she fights for the ball (just out of the picture)
2. gets it, turns it, beats this kid,
3. avoids one defender,
4. Now she's racing 2 defenders toward the goal! Sadly right after this picture she tripped and fell. :)
Eric is a cute coach. Here he is in a huddle with his forwards.
silly pic of Whitney and her friend Aiden who we got on our team.
and a few more blurry pictures of my super fast girl, always in the red socks!
She did score one more goal, in the LAST game, the only game we won!!
Here's Eric warming up with the kids.
we gave Whitney the "Fast Forward" award because we didn't want to give her MVP and make anyone feel bad. But Whitney, you were the real MVP!!!
Silly head. Here's to lots more soccer in the future!
