Bad News Bears

K plays soccer. She is in the local league, and is still young enough that they are mixed gender and - most importantly - don't keep score. This is good. Except when we play 90% of the other teams in the league - who keep score themselves. and I don't mean the kids- I mean the parents. This is not a travelling league or anything - this is the little fun league you pay like $30 for, and it is simple and relaxing. except for the parents of the other kids. Seriously - this is soccer for 6 and 7 year olds. CHILL OUT!

I will admit, our team sucks. SUCKS. They often kick the ball to their end of the field, nowhere near the net, out of bounds, and cheer as if they scored a goal. We had a game a few weeks ago where only 5 of our players showed up, so instead of fielding 2 teams of 6x6, we had less than one. Last week the opposing team scored 4 goals in the first 5 minutes (not that we were keeping score). So we suck. But our kids are nice, and sweet, and don't knock the other kids down or talk smack (???!!!) to the other team. Who are these kids - more importantly who are the parents of these kids. CHILL OUT people!

But this week was heaven. At first we were nervous, we were playing a team with the same name and uniform as ours. We couldn't figure out how this would work. Luckily, the kids didn't care - and even more miraculously, the parents didn't care. The kids just went out there and had fun! They enjoyed playing with each other. We all cheered for the red team - which was EVERYBODY! The kids applauded each other when they did well. It was really fantastic.

I am all for competition - but these kids are 6-7. Give them a break, let them have fun. And this weekend was awesome. At the end we all (some of us very seriously) considered leaving the league and just having our two teams play each other for the rest of the season!