This was Eli's second year to play soccer and there were some definite highs and lows. The way they organized the teams this year in our area really wasn't fair. Basically, if you knew people you could stack your team with as many players as you wanted. Everyone else was divided among the remaining coaches. Instead of dividing the boys and girls out evenly among all the teams you had some teams with 15 six year old boys on it and some teams (like ours) without a single one. Eli's team was VERY young. Only one other boy on Eli's team had played soccer before. The rest of the kids were all very new. Two of the kids in the picture below never even showed up to games, so that meant Eli and most of the other boys played the entire game. It sounds fun but when you have teams with 15+ players who can rotate players every 5 minutes for breaks, it makes it tougher on the little guys who can't rotate and get really tired.
Even with all those difficulties Eli definitely tried his hardest every game. He showed a lot more aggressiveness and awareness of the game. He ran faster and thought about what he was doing more. He had some games that were real stand-outs and some games that were huge blow-outs. It was an interesting season and to tell you the truth, I'm glad it's over. All the games were played on Sunday afternoons and more than anything we were all ready to have our weekends back! I guess when soccer sign-ups happen next year we'll just have to see if Eli wants to play or not. I don't think we're going to push him in any particular direction ;) So for now, here is this year's soccer highlight reel ...
Eli's 2014 Soccer Team
Eli definitely showed more aggressiveness this year when it came to playing.
We were very happy about that!
Team huddles happened after every game :)
These two are my heart.
Having a talk after a game where they didn't win...
Grammy, Pop, and Zue-Zue made a lot of Eli's games.
Ready and focused
Sometimes Eli had to even fight off his teammates for the ball.
This little boy earned lots of talks from his father (the coach)
about who was on his team and who wasn't.
One huge stand-out game for my little guy.
He scored 4 goals on his own!
The day we all had waited for since the beginning of the season...Time for his medal!
One last team huddle
Super proud of his medal
Grammy, Pop, and Zue-Zue were all there for his final game and to see him get his medal.
Way to go, Eli! You finished another season of soccer!
