End of Successful Soccer Seasons

Both Joshua and Clara recently finished their soccer seasons.  For Clara, it started off pretty rough, but we made some progress as the season went along.  Today was her last game, and it was her most positive experience yet.  She touched the ball a couple different times and generally felt good about her day and her season.  She was really proud to get the end-of-season medal.  Coach Shawn and The Soccerettes won a lot of games, and all the girls progressed in their skills, as he's a pretty great coach. Maybe Clara will end up playing soccer throughout her childhood, and maybe not, but I think it went well enough this time that we'll sign her up for another sesson in the spring to see if she continues to like it more.

Joshua had an excellent season.  He went through the same growing pains that Clara is now going through in his past seasons, but this was his third season, as he's really hit his stride.  But it wasn't all smooth.  Here you can see him with one of his teammates, Grayson.  One of the storylines of the season (from my perspective; it's not like it was a huge thing for the team) was Joshua's relationship with Grayson.  Joshua is a silly boy at times, and combining that with his attention span and occasional disinterest, I can see him being somewhat of a class clown in the future.  But another thing about him is he will gravitate to those personalities as well, which is to be expected.  Grayson is pretty much the same as him in that regard, so much so that when they are on the field at the same time, they often get so wrapped up in horsing around with each other that they become totally oblivious to the fact that there's a game going on on the same field, leaving their other two teammates to take on the opposing four by themselves for a period of time.  For awhile we (the "coaches") put them in opposite shifts, so they wouldn't be on the field together or on the sidelines together.  But they got a little better toward the end of the season and manages to mostly stay engaged in the game.  The other thing that is a huge part of soccer for Joshua is the snacks.  He really really looks forward to the snacks at the end of each game.  Here he is enjoying his spoils under a tree earlier this season.

The Mighty Bears had a really good season.  They won most of their games, and I could really see the progress that all the boys made from the beginning of the season to the end.  That was mostly due to Travis' leadership and coaching.  He's so good for the boys.  There was even one kid who had such anxiety before games that he wouldn't play, and Travis actually called him during the week to encourage him and help get him pumped up.  Joshua really enjoys playing at this point.  Part of it is because he's now a pretty good player.  He's one of the faster players on the team, and he has scored multiple goals this season, maybe six or so.  Joshua is the only one other than Travis' son Caden who has been on the team all three seasons.  During the medal ceremony, Travis always talks about each kid individually, and he talked longer about Joshua than any other kid, telling everyone how special Joshua was to him, because he'd seen him improve so much in the three seasons, and even recounting the story of Joshua's amazing end-to-end goal last season that he maintains is the best goal he's ever seen in any of the games he's coached.  It was a really nice speech, and Travis isn't sure how much longer he'll keep coaching the boys, but as long as he does, we'll make sure Joshua is on his team.  Regardless, Joshua will definitely play in the spring, as he seems to have an aptitude for soccer and also is now really enjoying it too.