Late summer means it is back to school time, and back to soccer on the weekends.  With two kids playing each week just getting to the games is tough enough, but honestly it is hard not to be a sports parent when you watch your kids play.

My son Ethan is 9 and soccer has started to make a bit of a turn for him.  For one strategy has become paramount.  Coaches no longer yell, "Go to the ball!" rather "Fall back, mark your man."  Ethan played defense the entire game, and his games have become low scoring affairs (which is why Americans just love this stuff).  The final this week was a 2-0 win.  Much like the cultured soccer fans, I found myself congratulating him on well defended drives by the other team and general alertness and hustle.  He is still such a small lad on the pitch, but he does strategically understand what he is doing almost to a fault.  Even Ethan after the game was ambivalent about the affair concerned more about how we were going to get to his sister's game that was already underway in another part of town and when and if some type of convenience store run could be inserted into the travel itinerary prior to arriving.

Now, Campbell who is 6 still has high scoring shootouts where there is no goalie and no real defense.  By the time we showed up the answer to my question of what the score was happened to be, "We are getting killed."  Of course, at this level you are supposed to be happy everyone is having a nice time.  Which brings up the larger issue of when you are supposed to care.  Seems to me that is sometime around Ethan's age and I end up feeling guilty that I want Campbell's team to win.  I am just as vocal as anyone else.  This is because my daughter is rough and tumble but often opts to stay on the edge of the fray.  When we arrived it was just before a quarter break, and like any kid assigned to defense she was bored.  I promised her that if she scored I would take her to the store for candy, which she complained,  "I can't Dad!  I am on defense."  Ethan even stood next to her and gave her what results as thin advice: "Campbell, you have to run to the ball and kick it and then run after it and you can't stop."  Campbell does the best exasperated expression and she pulled it from the collection in her head to use at this moment and slowly exhaled an "I know". Well, her position was changed for the following quarter and after several opportunities she finally put one in resulting in a lot of yelling and fist pumping from me.

Play continued and she had to chase down a loose ball that went out of bounds about 15 feet in front of me.  Campbell broke her focus from the game, pointed a finger at me, and said loudly, "now you have to take me to the store" proving that incentives at this level for kids worked.



Cam was just as proud of her front tooth which is ready to come out.  She spent plenty of time telling us all about it and wiggling it with her finger.  Since it is such a big part of her wonderful smile I insisted capturing one of the last look's we'll get at a full set of teeth for a while.

There will likely be a gap there for her soccer pictures next week which between two spread out games Saturday and two photo sessions Sunday looks like a weekend long affair.  With all the time we invest in soccer as parents in this country it is actually somewhat amazing that we don't tolerate the professional brand very much.  I would suspect because as time marches on it just looses it's cuteness, but right now I have to say it is fun.