Sunday, March 20, 2005
Drew had his first soccer game of the year yesterday (3/19), which was interesting to watch. This soccer league has a format that has each "game" start with a skills clinic before the competitive play begins, and they don't keep an official score or win-lose record – the emphasis is on building skills and having fun playing. This was my first chance to meet the coach, so he took a few minutes to talk to me before the start. One of the things he said to me was, "Drew really likes to win, doesn't he?" I was surprised he has picked that up after just a single practice, but it's certainly true. Drew can get very down if his team does poorly. The coach's point was that Drew might be sad after games that did not go well, and that I should help him focus on having fun.
Sure enough, the other team seemed to play a little more as a team and a couple of the kids were better than average at controlling the ball when they had it, and the result was lopsided goal-scoring and ball possession. In the second half, Drew actually stopped paying attention after the other team scored again and shoved his hands in his pockets and watched the ground instead of the game. The coach picked up on that immediately, and rotated him out of play. This gave me a chance to talk to Drew about how, if he wanted to turn the situation around (his first words to me were "Our team are total losers. We haven't scored ANY goals."), he had to actually try to do something about it rather than mope in the middle of the field, and to remind him that he was really there to play with the other kids, learn soccer and have fun, not win games. He complained that nobody passed the ball to him, but I had to point out that he wasn't trying to get open so they could pass it to him - they mostly didn't even have the option to get him the ball!
My "pep talk" had some effect, at least. When he went back in, he was more aggressive about gettin open and going to the ball when the other team had it. In fact, just moments after going back in, the goalie for his team had to throw the ball back out, and Drew was perfectly positioned for it, so he gave it right to him. That alone fired Drew up enough to give him back some enthusiasm! He played much better the rest of the game and had a lot more fun at it. I hoped he learned from this and concentrates less on the score on more on playing the game.
John
Sure enough, the other team seemed to play a little more as a team and a couple of the kids were better than average at controlling the ball when they had it, and the result was lopsided goal-scoring and ball possession. In the second half, Drew actually stopped paying attention after the other team scored again and shoved his hands in his pockets and watched the ground instead of the game. The coach picked up on that immediately, and rotated him out of play. This gave me a chance to talk to Drew about how, if he wanted to turn the situation around (his first words to me were "Our team are total losers. We haven't scored ANY goals."), he had to actually try to do something about it rather than mope in the middle of the field, and to remind him that he was really there to play with the other kids, learn soccer and have fun, not win games. He complained that nobody passed the ball to him, but I had to point out that he wasn't trying to get open so they could pass it to him - they mostly didn't even have the option to get him the ball!
My "pep talk" had some effect, at least. When he went back in, he was more aggressive about gettin open and going to the ball when the other team had it. In fact, just moments after going back in, the goalie for his team had to throw the ball back out, and Drew was perfectly positioned for it, so he gave it right to him. That alone fired Drew up enough to give him back some enthusiasm! He played much better the rest of the game and had a lot more fun at it. I hoped he learned from this and concentrates less on the score on more on playing the game.
John
For anyone who hasn't kept score, Drew is in a new school now, having switched to a private school in January after finding he was doing last year's work in the public school 2nd grade. Every so often, he is very sad about leaving NH and his friends there behind when we moved. Sometimes he is also sad about missing winter recreation like sledding and just plain old snow play. On Thursday, however, I was driving him to Cub Scouts after dinner, and he suddenly said, "There's a good thing about moving here from NH." I asked what it was, and he replied, "In NH, I only got one recess at school, and here I get *three* [the recesses are shorter and spread throughout the day]!" I asked if that was a good (meaning sufficient) reason to move across the country, and he responded with a confident "Yep!"
John
John
