GOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLL!!

Until now, none of our kids have shown much interest in soccer. I remember entering Seth in a league at age 4, and he just stood on the field and looked around or cried. Caleb cried on the way to the first practice, after we had signed him up to play. At least he got a shirt out of it. Luke, on the other hand, has been through several soccer camps at age 4, and now at age 5 is on his first team, The Raptors. Each "game," they practice for about 20 minutes, then they play a 40-minute scrimmage game with the team on the other side of the field. There is no goalie in this league, so as to allow as much soccer self esteem to build as possible.

We are in soccer mecca for the U.S., where the Capital Area Soccer League (CASL) rules the schedules of many families. We also have the SAS Soccer Park, where the last several men's or women's NCAA Final Four championship games have been hosted. Other than hockey, soccer is probably the other main sport I've never really played, or enjoyed, though I do enjoy watching hockey.

In this particular game, Luke got to show off his offensive skills, scoring at least 4 goals. I think I missed 1-2 additional goals on the video footage I gathered this past Saturday. Others on his team scored about 4-5 combined goals. Though they don't "keep score" at this age, the other team scored one goal, I think. I don't think they had many shots on goal either. It was tough getting past The Raptor defensive wall.

In prior games, where the opponent has had more shots on goal, Luke typically does well to play defense and guard the goal by anticipating shots and sweeping around to block the shots, usually with a diving slide, much like in baseball. This day, he was all offense, though he was playing with a skinned knee from the day before. You will see that he injures the knee further on a slide into the goal, and then limps off towards the camera. He sat out a rotation while I bandaged him up, then he was back in the game, and did well.

I edited the video together, but then had fun adding in some audio clips from various international soccer matches. There are some audio problems at the 3 minute mark, and that goal was the one with the announcer saying "GOOOOOAAAAALLLL".... but I'll have to work on that problem another day. It's quite funny! Enjoy!