"GOOOOOOAAAALLLLLL"!!!!

This Fall, Elliott is (finally!) old enough to enroll in his first organized sport.

Practices are at 6pm on Friday evenings and games on Saturday afternoons. Steve took on the lead on making sure Elliott had all the right gear and tried to do plenty of extra practicing in the backyard.

Neither Alina nor Steve actually played soccer as a child... the night before Elliott's first game, we downloaded the rules from the website to educate ourselves on what's happening on the field.

Elliott's speed on the field and focus on the game proved to help him stand out among the 4 year olds! He went after the ball with plenty of vigor.The first period of the first game evoked the most laughter we can recall in recent memory. Most kids had never played in an organized game before . The refs blew the whistle to stop but the excited boys just kept going.. and going! Spectators spent half the time calling out "No Hands!!!" or "Wrong way!!!" Honestly, some of the boys looked pretty bewildered on field with all the yelling from well-meaning spectators and the loud whistle from the ref.
Elliott scored 2 goals in his first game. We were proud and also in awe of his success -- must be those soccer genes from Auntie Em!

Standing at the sidelines at the end the game, we looked around the field at all the kids and parents and folding chairs and mini-vans, feeling that we had entered a new phase of parenting. Another rite of passage under our belt as parents - now we are Soccer Parents! The role feels like a new shoe which hasn't been broken in yet. And, in some ways, standing on the field also felt like sitting at the top of a steep roller-coaster since soccer is the beginning of so many more big-kid activites. Here we go!