Alice had a game this evening over at a local park rather than her normal practice location. It was shady and in the evening so the pictures were a bit harder than usual, although I think I am overcoming a focus issue with my 70-200 2.8 lens.
Oh, the game! Nobody cares about poor old Dad’s problems …
It was a decent game. Alice’s team was about the same, although one of the girls was much more in the game than is her usual wont, with lots of good drives up the outside (not a whole lot of passing at this level). Alice was mostly out of it for the first half but after some encouragement started to participate although a large patch of mud on the field would frequently captivate her.
There was some shoving, but not a huge amount. One of Alice’s teammates is a fairly heavy kid, especially for kindergarten, and apparently has a much higher capacity for momentum than braking which frequently leads to him plowing over anyone who gets the ball from him during a drive. I thought he might just be trying his hand at being an enforcer against opponents but he plowed several of his teammates as well, it’s just that they don’t get in front of him to get the ball as often. He also, during the last game and this game, threw himself to the ground in between the ball and the goal to stop an attack so he’s got some team spirit.
Another child decided the kicking other players would be fun. Another girl and Alice responded in kind. What could go wrong? The result was in both girls getting kicked too hard and leaving the game in tears. Alice told me “I don’t like soccer anymore!”. After letting her stew for a minute, I pointed out that snacks where only for kids who played in the game. It took another 5 seconds or so for Alice to “girl up” and get back in the game.
There were a good number of cascading failures during the game as well. These, unlike the previous time, involved both teams. One kid would go down, take out a teammate or two (because they like to bunch up) and frequently spill over and take out an opponent or two. Like little flailing dominoes.
On the positive side, Alice played keeper for a chunk of the game without getting scored on. She stopped several good kicks by squatting down and and actually catching the ball on purpose. Alice did some decent kicking when she wasn’t playing goalie with a couple of drives but she still needs some prodding to mix it up in the scrum.
