Youth soccer season starts today!  

My 10 year old son has his first match next week.
His team have a new coach/manager.
The team have been doing lots of training over the summer holidays and should gel together good next week.

My nine year old daughter is playing on a traveling team (select soccer), our team has been together for two seasons now and sometimes I think it is crazy what they expect of these girls but when they get on the field and play it pays off! I love watching her team play, its nice knowing all the girls and their families. We all know our kids strengths and weaknesses on the field so we try to "coach" from the sidelines accordingly! Most of the time the parents on the opposing don't like that so much!

My 5 yr old had her first game of the season this morning. They split up the team so it is 6 against 6 on two fields. My daughter is one of the older kids and this is her second year so she got put on the team with the younger kids to help them out. Her coach was on the other side so one of the dads was helping out on the field. It was raining slightly but nothing really bad, we have played in much worse. Anyway I was shocked and amazed when I saw this dad running on the field, "coaching" the kids while holding a big golf umbrella. He looked like Mary Poppins running back and forth, I kept waiting for him to fly away. During the second half it had stopped raining and he still had the umbrella. It was closed but he turned into Jimminy Cricket using it as a pointer to tell the kids what to do. Hopefully he won't volunteer next week or at least leave the umbrella at home.