Today was Alex's last game, sort of. I'm working tomorrow, so I'll miss his actual last game. We've talked to him about this for a month or so. He wants to quit club soccer at the end of this fall season. He doesn't seem to enjoy it and he wants his Saturdays free to do other things. It's frustrating for him partly because most of the boys on his team don't follow what the coach says. Alex does a lot of the goal kicks and ideally he should kick to the outside of the field, for example. Well, all the boys he kicks to tend to cluster in the middle of the field--behind the other teams' players. This is only one of the reasons why they haven't won any games. It's been a few seasons of not winning games and it's frustrating for the parents too. Alex isn't entirely without fault in this. In today's game, for example, while the other team racked up point after point, he was not running, he was walking. He wasn't scrambling for the ball, similar to his teammates. The other team scrambled to the ball and won 8-0.
So, today I'm thankful that he's had the opportunity to play club soccer. I'm thankful that he wanted to play club soccer. Hopefully it will help him when he plays high school soccer next year. Of course, after all of the discussion about quitting, today he expressed doubts. He wondered if staying in club soccer would help him do better in high school soccer. We'll have to do some further discussion on this.
This picture shows one of the boys on the other team leaning into Alex while Alex is trying to move the ball down the field. Alex had told me about this earlier today, before I'd realized that I had taken this picture and an additional three pictures of this exchange. Alex stepped back a little so that the boy leaning into him lost his balance and fell forward. I found it interesting that in the pictures, I can see Alex with a big smile on his face as the boy falls forward. I want to see him enjoying soccer again.
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