Soccer Fun

Watching young children play sports is very entertaining. They are there to play because it’s fun and don’t worry too much about winning, most of the time they have no idea what the score is.

My daughter is trying soccer again this year. She was four the first year she played and often spent more time picking flowers, socializing with other players – regardless of which team they were on, and taking water breaks. She wasn’t that into the game so last year she didn’t play.

This year she wanted to try again so my husband and I signed her up.

There is still some flower picking, usually when she’s in goal, but lots of children are in their own little worlds when they are in the goalie net and the action of away from them. I’ve seen kids trying to climb the mesh or watching the game going on in the next field.

There are any number of things one can see on the soccer field when young children are playing including a child giving a teammate a piggy back during play, a child spinning in the middle of the field, two children – usually girls – discussing some part of their uniform, and a child looking around as though unsure what to do.

One of my favourite occurrences is when all the kids gather around the ball. They don’t quite understand how to find an open space away from the action so the ball can be passed to them, then again the child with the ball often doesn’t realize that he or she can pass it and keeps running towards the opponents goal. I laugh when a child steals a ball from a teammate, which happens all the time.

We are lucky the coaches for our daughter’s team want the kids to have fun. They work with the team on the rules of the game and skills but they don’t get upset when the children are fooling around or make mistakes. Unfortunately, there are some parents who expect quite a lot from the kids at this age and are constantly yelling at the children on the field about positions and paying attention, even children who aren’t their own. It’s really frustrating to hear.

There’s lots of time for the children to become super-competitive and want to play the game to win as opposed to doing it just to have fun. Let’s allow the kids have fun while they can and enjoy the innocent way they play the game.