Our 5 Year Old Soccer Coach

Hallie has started playing soccer this year. She has had a couple games and is doing really well and enjoying it. After each game, she always asks if we won. The league that she plays in does not officially keep score, but knowing that she wants to know if we win, I keep score. After the first game, she asked and I explained to her that we had lost. She was a little upset, but said that we would win the next one. A couple days later, on the way to school, she asked me if they would win their next soccer game. I told her that I hoped so. Then, in a very strong coach voice, she asked, "Do you want us to lose?" I said no. Then she said, "You want us to win, Right?" I said yes and then it began. She launched into an inspirational coach locker room speech that would rival the greatest coaches ever. "Well, then we need to run fast. We have to run fast and kick the ball hard. We have to kick it so hard that no one can stop it and we have to kick it in the net. If the other team gets the ball, we have to chase them down, kick it away from them and kick it into the net. We can't let them score. We will score all of the goals and they won't score any. We are going to win this week because we are the best." After that, I was fired up. I wanted to go an play some ball right then. Unfortunately, we lost the next game too, but Hallie played even better the second week and tried really hard. She even kicked the ball out of the pile of kids a couple of times and started to kick it toward the goal. We will get that win sometime.

Here are a couple of pictures of the little soccer dynamo in action.