I just signed Link up for our local youth soccer team. I’ve never wanted to be a soccer mom. I’m not interested in the game. I worry about competition and negative experiences. But Link wants to play. He REALLY wants to play. He’s been taking his soccer ball to school every day so that he could play during recess. Now it is summer and he still wants to play. He wants the chance to run around playing soccer. He doesn’t care much about winning. So I signed him up for a team that is supposed to emphasize playing over winning. I hope this will be a better experience than I am expecting.
6 thoughts on “Soccer Mom”
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I hope you’ll keep us posted on how it goes. Knowing Alex, I suspect he’ll want to play at least one organized sport once he’s older. Secrets on how to make it a good experience would be much appreciated.
If being a Soccer Mom is too much to admit, you could always impress people by saying your son plays European Football. 🙂
Europeans do everything cooler
…and then punch them and trample them when they go down! 🙂
It might not be just not bad
Consider the possibility that this could be great for Link. If he likes the sport, he’s likely to practice, and that means he’s likely to get good at it. Competition isn’t bad: Overcompetetiveness is. For Link to discover that he likes the sport and then turn out to be good at it would be wonderful for his self esteem.
Who knows? He could get engaged in the game, get motivated to work hard at it, and discover that as a result he’s better than a lot of kids who don’t want to work so hard for it. He could discover the bittersweet taste of working really hard, getting trounced by that really talented snot from across town, and going home knowing that he played better than his previous best. He could learn what it feels like to let his team down, or be let down by his team… or what it feels like to work together and win.
There’s a hundred things that could go wrong, of course, from discouragement if his team never wins to being yelled at by other soccer moms to discovering that he’s really not good at it.
Sort of like Life. Only with a really wise mom helping him wend his way through the tough bits.
Re: It might not be just not bad
You’re right, there is great potential for growth and learning. That is why I am willing to make the experiment. But if he stops enjoying it, then we’ll quit. There are times to play the “finish what you started” card, but I don’t feel that a voluntary recreational activity is one of those times.
I wonder if there is a soccer team out there that will allow
my daughter to be a ballerina princess soccer player? 🙂
I’m sure we will be looking into soccer for Soccer(ballerina princess)Girl next year. Then I’ll be a soccer (ballerina queen?) mom?