After sitting through an hour of my son’s practice last night, I felt like channeling Allen Iverson (my all time favorite point guard and Sixer) and going on a practice rant. “Practice, we talking about practice. Not a game, not a game. We talking about practice.”
Anyway I bring this up because let’s just say 5-6 year old rec soccer is tough to watch. Games involve almost all the kids following the ball all around the field. Practice well that’s another story.
Most of this practice was a scrimmage which I know these are parent volunteers coaching and I know the kids are young, but they need drills and to get the basic skills down. They don’t need to run around playing bad soccer and not learning anything.
Then there’s the kids themselves. One would randomly throw his hat on the field throughout the practice and tried to knock the ball out of the coach’s hand several times. One would stand and hug the goal and that’s about it. One kept kicking the ball really high in the air and almost kicked the coach in the face. Another player kept running over to his dad to tell him he was hungry. One falls down all the time and thinks it’s funny and ended up getting drilled in the nuts hard with the ball.
Yes this is what I subjected myself to for an hour. I kept thinking how the hell do elementary school teachers do it? These kids are driving me crazy. While Shane may drive me crazy at home sometimes he was fine at practice and one of the few actually paying attention and going after the ball and trying to score.
The icing on the cake was the finish to the practice. Practice ended about 10 minutes early because the coach’s son had to poop. There were no bathrooms at this school so I felt bad because that was definitely a shitty situation for them. (See what I did there.) But yes practice was cut short so the coach could leave so his son could go poop.
And here’s the irony. Practice was changed to a field we haven’t used yet. This field did not have port a potties like the field we had been practicing at. We supposedly changed fields because there were big goals to use at this field instead of the pop up goals. But two other teams were using the goals when we got there so we should never have changed fields in the first place!
Despite all this, I do want to thank the parents who take the time to coach my sons’ teams. It’s not an easy job and you don’t get paid and without a coach, my boys wouldn’t be able to play. I also think the kids were being so bad during the few drills the coach tried that he decided to scrimmage in an attempt to engage them all. So even with the craziness and shitty end (see I did it again) to practice, a huge thank you not only to Shane’s coach, but all parents who allow our kids the chance to play.
#youthsports #thejoysofparenting #thankyouparentcoaches #momoffive #onetoughmother #wetalkingaboutpractice #alleniverson #soccerpractice