Soccer Champion

My 5 year old son C can’t get enough soccer right now. He was asking me to play soccer with him on the weekend for a 1 on 1 session, but it’s hard to get away from the other kids. Luckily, for him, an opportunity presented itself one morning, so I took him out.

We went to the park around the corner and set up some pop-up goals. We spent some time dribbling and shooting from all sorts of weird angles. C is getting so much better and if he was taller and stronger, he would already be better than me. I can still kick the ball in from much further away obviously, but his ball skills are way better than mine.

After some fun games, C likes to scrimmage. We always have a good battle and to not play super hard so that he has a chance. I also try to shoot it from far away as well, but given those contracts, I still try to win. Now it’s to a point where C can consistently take the ball from me and then he can fire a shot with a smaller and smaller window. He beat me 10-6 and was so happy.

On the way back, I told him about defensive strategy. His mind needed to be as sharp as his skills were because if you were to analyze my play style, he could use it against me. I told him that my ball skills were not good and I relied a lot on speed. I do one quick kick far away to make a move and then I try to outrun him and blast a shot. I also kick using my left foot a lot and he could hound that foot to really make it tough on me to get around and do what I need to do. He asked a few questions and I answered it, but I can tell he was still processing this. Just planting the seed here and make sure he focuses on the mental side of things.

After lunch, I took my 7 year old daughter E and C to ride bikes so I could walk our dog, and then I somehow forgot that C’s soccer session was starting soon. My wife had to call and remind me, so I rushed home to get him to soccer.

He didn’t miss much of the session and jumped right into playing games. To play a bunch of different games where kids have to steal the ball and kick it into different goals. If you lost your ball, you became another person to steal balls and kick them into the goals. It’s survival of the fittest and after running around the track, I ended up noticing that C was being hounded by 8-10 kids. He was dribbling all around them until he was the champion and I was really impressed. I hadn’t seen him do that against a swarm of kids.

The next few games were similar, where you had to dribble your ball across the field wall kids lined up in the middle to try and steal it. C kept finding a way past everyone and was crowned the champion every time after those games were over. He came over just to tell me that and grab some water.

Then came time for scrimmaging. I didn’t know how he would do because he had been so active the entire day. Right when scrimmaging started though, he blasted a goal through within the first few seconds. I thought he was going to dominate, but it turned out that his team was struggling. C scored all of the goals and did a crazy spin move to score his last one, but the other team equalized with time running out. They put another minute on the clock and C got close to score a goal. The other kids blocked it at the last second, but one of the kids on the other team picked the ball up with his hands, which was a huge penalty.

The coach awarded C a free kick at the midfield and the other kids couldn’t interfere. If he made the shot, his team won. C stepped up to the ball and blasted it with confidence. The ball rolled in for the win and I was so happy for him!

He basically won everything that day and was a huge soccer champion. He had the best day and he even came home and wanted to play more soccer. We ended up kicking the ball back-and-forth to each other down the long hallway and if the ball didn’t touch the wall, you got a point. I was in the lead, and of course he ended up taking the win at the last few kicks. I’ll have to keep practicing so I don’t fall too far behind and learning something new with my kids is one of my favorite things to do, especially if they are having fun learning as well.