Braxton's First Soccer Game

Braxton’s first soccer game was on Saturday, and it was…well…umm… let’s just say it was entertaining. Braxton has never played soccer before and he is certainly NOT an aggressive kid. When we signed up for soccer, all I knew was that he liked to run. I figured that was enough of a prerequisite for him to play soccer in the 6 and under league. I’m beginning to think that that may have been an incorrect assessment on my part. I should have known that this was going to be an interesting season when I told the coach that Braxton was a bit timid and not aggressive and he said to me, “Well, it should be interesting watching him play soccer!” I also should have known that when I got his uniform that he may be a bit smaller than the other players in his league. I told the coach to order him the smallest shorts that they had, and apparently that wasn’t small enough. His shorts fell right off of him. His shirt also hung to his knees. I searched high and low to find him some shorts that fit – no luck. He ended up wearing shorts that were too big and made him look as if he were wearing some sort of strange looking skirt or something. See Exhibit A:



When we showed up for the big game, the first thing I noticed was that the other kids all looked a little bigger and certainly had better fitting uniforms. That should have clued me in right away that we were in for some trouble. The game started, and I quickly praised the Lord that Braxton wasn’t of “starting player” caliber, because within the first five seconds of the game, our opposing team’s star player got the ball and headed straight down the field and scored a goal. This kid was two head lengths taller than every other kid on the team and had obviously kicked a soccer ball a time or two before. As the game progressed, he began kicking kid’s legs out from under them. Any time he was around a player on our team, somehow they ended up on the ground. Poor Braxton stood and watched in horror as I smiled and tried to encourage him that everything was going to be ok and that this was “fun.” After watching a few more minutes (and about ten more goals for the other team!), I began to get scared for my sweet little boy. I ended up telling him that he never even had to touch the ball. He just needed to run back and forth with the other players as fast as he could. Sure enough, he got called in to play for the second quarter and he did exactly that! One of the players on the other team was playing defense and was covering Braxton. He got all up in Braxton’s personal space (another issue we’ll discuss at a later date) and Braxton gave me the “Mommy, I’m not liking this” look! He tried to politely back away from him and didn’t want much to do with the whole defense thing. See Exhibit B



My sweet boy ended up playing in two quarters of the game and managed to stay on both feet the entire game. In the end, the Fire Ants only scored two goals on Saturday. One goal was scored by the coach’s son. The other was accidentally kicked in by the opposing team. I lost track of what the final score was. I’m thinking it was like 600-2 or something like that. After the game, Braxton said that he had a good time, so I guess that’s all that matters. I am thinking that this is going to be one crazy season!