Soccer Star!

Last Saturday, before we took off for Ryan's birthday weekend, we went to Austin's first soccer practice!  He's playing pee-wee soccer this season on a team of 3 and 4 year olds and it's just about the cutest thing I have ever seen.  Austin chose to be lucky #7.  He's the youngest on the team this year because he just made the cut, and it's a little obvious, but I think he'll start to blend in more as the season progresses.

Austin loved the warm up and Ryan and I got a kick out of watching him try to do jumping jacks.  Then the kids kicked the ball in the goal a few times and Austin enjoyed that as well.  The dribbling drills were a little tricky as he didn't get the whole idea about not touching the ball with your hands.  Coach M had learned Austin's name by this point and was using it a lot.  The funniest thing was when the coach told the kids to dribble their balls over to the white line.  Austin took this as meaning his ball had to be directly on the white line and was not satisfied until his ball was resting exactly in place.  He kept fidgeting with the ball until it was lying directly on the line and he was so concerned about the placement of his ball that he would miss the rest of the instructions.  He sooo gets that from his daddy!

Austin pretty much tuned out the last 15 minutes of practice and did his own thing.  I guess he found soccer just about as interesting as most Americans.  That, or the fact that he's 2 and has the attention span of a fish right now.  He started watching the kids playing t-ball on an opposite field and told us he was ready to go play baseball now.  Unfortunately we have to wait until next year for t-ball...

We've got practice for a few more weeks and then they start scrimmaging other teams.  I just hope Austin learns not to touch the ball between now and then or he's going to get so many handball penalties that he'll be thrown out of every game!  Maybe we should go ahead and start positioning him for the roll of goalie....