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Charlotte is less than three weeks away from her sixth birthday. To say that this past year of her life has flown by would be like saying that the sun is kind of warm -- it just can't begin to convey all that has happened.
It's also an understatement to say that the three of us have a VERY hectic schedule. With my return to full-time work at the beginning of the year, we have found ourselves juggling three competing sets of priorities. But, with the arrival of spring things have gone to the next level because Charlotte is participating in not one but two sport activities -- soccer and tee-ball.
Charlotte played indoor soccer two years ago, but this is the first year she's old enough to play outdoor soccer. From what I can tell, every single child in our town from the age of five up plays in the soccer program, no exceptions. It certainly seems that way when we get to the field and have to find a place to park behind the elementary school.
The soccer program is basically an all-Saturday affair. The earliest groups start at 7:30 in the morning and the last groups finish up around 7:30 in the evening. Charlotte's team plays later in the day, from 4:45 to 6:00. In the space of that time, the children spend about a half an hour warming up and practicing, then they play a game against one of the other teams that consists of two 20-minute halves.
Because this is the first year for these kids, the program only involves teaching them basic skills. They do a few typical soccer drills during practice; for the games, there are no goalies, the kids don't play proper positions, and they don't keep score. Everybody just runs after the ball. I imagine this exact same scenario is played out by literally millions of five-year-olds all over the United States every Saturday in April and May.
Charlotte's coach is a little too gung-ho. He's trying to get the kids to play position, to pass, and to pay a little too much attention to the rules given the "everyone's a winner" nature of the program. He hasn't pushed that too far yet. His own daughter is on the team, and you can tell that he's already drilled her into a miniature Mia Hamm, while the rest of the kids (including Charlotte) are happy to chase the ball.
This week the tee-ball program began and the differences are very noticeable. For starters, it seems like there are substantially fewer kids involved. Especially girls. The soccer program separates the boys and girls, but there are enough girls to fill up all the girls' teams. The tee-ball program has them playing together, but the boy-girl ratio is totally skewed. Charlotte's team began with 3 girls and 6 boys, but the other girls have already quit the program and so she is now the ONLY girl on her team. The team they played against last night had two girls at the beginning of the game and one of those girls gave up and sat out the rest of the game after the first inning.
From the approach side, the idea is the same: everybody plays, everybody gets an at-bat every inning, everybody bats until they get a hit, everybody scores a run, and so on. The coaches are only teaching the three main skills: hitting, catching and throwing. So every time the ball is hit, nine kids run after the ball regardless of where it went.
Because baseball involves a lot more standing around and waiting, the coaches spend a lot more time shepherding the kids than the soccer coaches do. Five and six year olds are not known for their ability to wait patiently. Even when they're in the field, the kids are not always paying strict attention to the game. Charlotte spent a fair amount of time last night SITTING in left field, picking grass.
Until her first practice Monday evening, Charlotte had never even so much as seen a baseball game, let alone know how to do anything. She is a complete baseball noob. Some of the kids on her team, though, obviously play baseball at home because they can hit long fly balls, know how to run the bases, and are chafing to play "real" baseball with strikes and outs and so on. Her coaches seem to recognize this and (as you can see in the picture at the top of this post) take the time with the less-experienced kids to help them begin to understand what to do.
Bridget allowed herself to be corralled into being a parent-coach for the soccer program. She was smart to make sure that she and Charlotte are on different teams so that Charlotte can pay attention to what her actual coach is trying to do. Being one of the parent-coaches doesn't involve a lot more than helping set up the fields and making sure the kids are safe. That's luck for Bridget, because she doesn't know Thing One about soccer.
My job is to show up and sit on the sidelines. That's about all I'm good for, so I don't have a problem with that. I never played any sports due to a combination of some physical limitations and a total lack of interest. I could probably handle the limited duties of being a parent-coach at this level, but I see that as a slippery slope and don't want to create the expectation on anybody's part that I might be actively involved beyond being a spectator.
For her part, Charlotte is simply loving being involved. I don't know if she'll develop a real interest in playing sports or not. I suspect that once these kids move up a level and start sifting out the kids who are good at the sports from the kids who aren't, she'll be in the latter group and those kids usually drift away. For the moment, the fun is outweighing everything else, even the overloaded schedule, so we'll just ride it all out and see how it goes.
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