First Soccer Class

Luke had his first soccer class this past Saturday at the YMCA. What a hoot! He is more comfortable in new situations than is Bryn, and for the most part he was fine with my sitting on the sidelines. He was thrilled when the class began with the teachers issuing t-shirts to wear -- in his favorite color, no less (red). The class began with dribbling the ball, but Luke complained that doing so was too hard. Sure enough, his ball rolled away from him every time his foot made contact with the ball. But a couple of times he managed to stop the ball by putting his foot on top. His favorite part of the class was trying to kick the ball into the net.

At the mid-way point, two high school boys joined the class as instructors, and my impression is that they don't have the right skill set to work with really young children. They put in place some advanced drills -- asking the little kids to kick the ball to the instructors, who would in turn pass the ball back to the three-year-olds, so they could then take a shot on goal -- and lacked the warmth that is needed to communicate with pre-schoolers. The class is an hour long, which is too long for this age group, I think. This past weekend we needed to leave early to take Bryn to her dance class, and we'll miss next week on account of a birthday party, but we'll see how it goes next weekend when Ken takes Luke to his second session. There are aspects of the class that are really fun, and I know Luke will be excited to wear his red shirt to class.