Pele, Beckham....Colton

If you didn't get the reference from the blog post title, Colton has joined the esteemed company of Pele, Beckham, and millions of other famous (and not so famous) soccer players in the world as he officially began his soccer career last week!!!
His first practice was last Thursday.  It was freezing, and I was pretty miserable, but he had a pretty good time.  He kicked it when he was supposed to kick it, learned to dribble (kind of!), and learned how to stop it with his foot.
                                 
                                 
                                 
And then his first game was last Sunday.  He was totally decked out in his gear (that is the whole point of this, right? so mom can get a cute picture?).  And even had pretty amazing luck as he was in the right place at the right time and managed to score one of his team's three goals.
                                   
                                   
But really the highlight of the experience for him were the Capri Suns and goldfish at half time.
                                       
Honestly, I wish I could say that he is having a blast with soccer, but this story doesn't necessarily have a happy ending.  See, the league Colton is in has 3-6 year olds.  3-6 year olds!!!  Did you all catch how big of a range that is?!?  Obviously, I  knew that signing him up, but I thought the playing time would be age divided, or the older ones would be encouraged to pass/share with the younger ones, or something.  None of that happened.  Colton was thrown in there with kids much older and much bigger than he was...he couldn't get to the ball, and on the couple of occasions that he did, some bigger kid would come, take it, and knock him down.  There were lots of tears...sobbing tears...and even one incident where he pushed another kid (!).  There's really no coach...just a parent volunteer...and each parent is pretty much in it for their kids best interest and certainly aren't encouraging them to share or pass to Colton or the other little ones on the team (in fact, I think the parents of the oldest girl on the team think college scouts are there to watch her as they taped up her earrings, yelled at her to hustle, and encouraged her to hog the ball the whole time!).
Colton started his soccer experience really excited and left the field Sunday hating it.  As much as I believe my child should have to experience defeat and struggles in life, I also think it has to be in situations in which he can actually succeed if he keeps trying!  I explained that to the league director the other day in hopes that he would understand that we wanted Colton's first sports experience to be a positive one, and thus refund us our money, but he was pretty much an ass about it.  After speaking to him awhile, we agreed that Colton would try out one more practice and then we'd come to a conclusion.
Well, we went to practice again last night and lo and behold, my little soccer stud had a blast (he's #1 by the way)!

(Oh and Levi looked pretty cute watching his brother)

So I guess the verdict is still out.  I'm really hoping this turns out to be a positive experience for Colton.  And I guess, at the very least, we'll have some super cute pictures to show for it!