Soccer Stars

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate signing the girls up for soccer?  I hate it because you always have to sign them up literally like 6 months before they play.  It's so hard to say what the girls will be interested in 6 months from now.  In the spring Kelli and Makayla decided they wanted to play.  In the meantime, they started doing gymnastics and loved it.  However, since we had already paid over $200 for them to play, we told them they could just take a break from gymnastics to do soccer.  In the end, Makayla had soccer three days a week so she stopped doing gymnastics.  Kelli only had it two days, and her coaches begged us to let her keep doing it.  They even said they would charge less money if she could keep going.  We want the girls to be able to do lots of things and have lots of hobbies, so we said yes.  What a long season!  They started in August and had games every Saturday until the week before Thanksgiving.  At the beginning of the season, it was hotter than hot (like in the 90's).  At the end of the season the morning games got pretty cold and it even snowed once (just light snow, because it was in the desert, but it was still cold and windy).  Our town is too small for a soccer league so we actually combine with several other towns and a city.  This means a 45 minute trip to the fields every Saturday.  It was nice that the girls only played at the same time once or twice, but usually there was a few hours in between games.  Just enough to take up our whole Saturdays.  Even though it was so long and time consuming, the girls loved it so it was all worth it.

Makayla was in the U10 league which is the first "competative" league where they actually keep score and winning teams can go to the playoffs.  Her team was the "Watermelon Crushers" because their shirts were the color called watermelon.  Their team was so awesome!  They won most of their games during the season and took second place.  They also took second place in the tournament.  Makayla has become such an awesome defender.  She is good at being aggressive and stealing the ball when girls try to score.  Makayla's best games were against the top team.  The girls were all so much bigger and taller than her and VERY aggressive.  Instead of going around players, they liked to go through players.  After one or two hits from the girls, instead of being scared and backing down, Makayla stepped up and took it.  She kept stopping them and stealing the ball from them and we thought it was pretty cool when we heard their coach telling the girls not to take the ball down Makayla's side because she was too tough for them. 

Since Makayla's team took second place, they got to go to the regional tournament.  It was in Palmdale in January-told you it was a long season.  They played 4 games but only won 3 of them so they didn't get to go to divisionals, but the girls sure had a fun time and learned so much!

This was Kelli's first year of playing soccer.   Her team was called the Raptors.  Can you tell she was the shortest one on her team?  This just meant that her little legs had to move much faster to keep up.  Kelli is super fast and doesn't let the fact that she is small keep her from getting into the middle of plays.  Somehow Kelli just seemed to know where to stand so the ball would come to her.  She scored lots of goals this year and can't wait to play again next season.

Laney   wasn't old enough to play this year, but she still went to every game and every practice.  What a trooper.  I don't think that she actually watched very much soccer, but she always found things to keep herself occupied and most of the time she enjoyed being there.