The Green What?

This was Landen's first year playing soccer. Mike and I had no idea how he would be since our first experience with Gage when he was four was awful. Landen would play around in the backyard with us before the season started but we really couldn't tell how he would be once around kids his age. We should have known since he is competitive in everything he does. Landen has to be first out the door, first when riding bikes, and hates to lose at any game.

I signed up to be Landen's coach since I don't think I can handle coaching kids much older than this. I gotta get my years in while I can. AYSO does something really cool at this age. They play 3 on 3 with no goalie. I love it. The kids get to touch the ball so much more. The first 1/2 hour we practice and the next 1/2 hour is the game. Our team couldn't decide on a team name so each week I would let a different player pick our team name. I got some funny looks from other coaches when they asked what our team name was and I replied with things like, "green grass", "green planets", "green power rangers", and "green race cars". I actually think the kids enjoyed it though. They looked forward to being able to take a turn picking a name.

I hate to brag, but I think Landen is kinda a natural at soccer. He scored a few goals every game except maybe one. Landen complained during the game he didn't score saying it wasn't fair that the other team wasn't letting him get a goal. Of course Landen scoring goals was awesome, but what impressed Mike and I the most was Landen's ability to play defense. The other team would be on a breakaway and Landen would chase the kid down, take the ball away, turn it around and be on his own breakaway moments later. It was pretty neat to watch.

I think we lost 2 games and Landen was really upset when we lost. He would keep score and be mad if we didn't win. You just can't teach competitiveness to a kid. Don't get me wrong, Landen is far from the perfect player. He has no stamina. Landen was the first to volunteer to sit out and complained a lot during the game saying that he was tired.

I don't have a ton of pictures of Landen playing since I was coaching and Mike hardly ever helps with pictures!

Doing 30 minutes of drills for six four year olds is a really long time.


Here we are practicing throwing the ball in. Sometimes I had 8 kids to teach because Gage and Tanner joined in.


We had to break up a lot of fights on our team because when we lined up, the kids would start pushing eachother. We frequently reviewed the concept of personal space.


This was a confusing game since our uniforms looked similar. Landen is left footed which is kinda fun to see. He hasn't learned my famous cut back move yet. Landen would dribble straight down the field and out of bounds. He would forget to cut over towards the goal.

Favorite part of going to the soccer field.

My dad actually noticed a funny thing about my boys' numbers. Mike and I being the coaches enabled them to pick their numbers first. Landen picked 4 because he is 4 and and Gage picked 7 because he is 7. Long story as to why, but my soccer number in high school was 47.