A Disinterested Mighty Tiger

Joshua had a reasonable amount of fun during his previous soccer sessions, all of which were indoor sessions with Little Kickers at All American Indoor Sports.  This fall, we wanted to try him in outdoor soccer, which we did through Johnson County Parks and Rec.  He's older, so it's more advanced, as they actually need to wear shin guards.  The format is similar to how tee ball was, where they spend the first part of the hour practicing, and then the second part is a game against another team.  They have reversible red/blue jerseys, and here Joshua is in his red jersey.

Joshua is lucky enough to have Peyton Manning as his coach.  It's impressive that Peyton can be here on Saturdays and then make it to the Broncos games on Sunday.  Here Peyton coaches the kids, having calmed down a bit from how he coached on SNL.  Okay, maybe Joshua's coach isn't not Peyton, and is instead Coach Travis, but he looks and sounds just like him.

At this level of soccer, there are no positions or concept of spacing on the field.  They just want the kids to learn to kick the ball and maybe sometimes pass it.  So it's called bunch ball or bumblebee ball, or whatever else.  And that works, because of course all the kids want to do is get in on the action and kick the ball.  On the left you can see shortly after kickoff how everyone is around the ball.  As play continues, as you can see on the right, most kids stay right with the ball.  But you can see one kid off to the left in that picture.  No big deal, you think.

But as the pack moves down the field, one kid remains, uninterested, or possibly unaware, that there is a soccer game going on of which he is participating as one of only four members of his team, causing his dad to have to take a super wide shot to even include him in the same picture as the team.  Yes, that kid is Joshua.  Similar to tee ball, he likes the idea of the sport, but when it comes to following instructions and rules, he's not really into it.  As soon as Coach Peyton/Travis notices Joshua is away from the rest of the team, he'll run back and say in a friendly and encouraging voice, "Hey Joshua!  Come on, buddy!" and wrangle him in.  I hear that so many times throughout every game.  But the coach can only do so much.  I try to prep Joshua for the games by telling him about how we need to run wherever the ball is and kick it, and he agrees at the time, but once the game starts, he has no interest in kicking the ball.  This is confounding to me, as it goes against everything in my personality (my love of sports, competing, winning, etc.).  But I realize he's only three, so I'm not too worried about it.  But it's something we'll continue to work on as we go forward.

Here's their team picture, though for some reason Coach Travis not only doesn't looks like Peyton here, he doesn't even look like Coach Travis, to the point I'm almost wondering if this was a different coach, but I don't think it was.  It must just be a weird facial expression.  Anyway, these are the Mighty Tigers.