Yay!
I dunno how to do it either, but PK was talking about playing soccer once we get settled in the new place. I might have to bat signal you for soccer mom tips.
Awwww, cute. I don't think parents bring doughnuts for each other, but usually alternate bringing snacks for the kids at their games.
They'll figure out where the goal is in a couple years. Little kid soccer is mostly mob-ball, where a mass of children encircles the ball and attempts to kick it. But the ball always bounces off of someone's legs and never goes anywhere.
Sweeet! Women's soccer can be an excellent game to watch live.
Hooray! I had so much fun playing soccer as a kid, except for when the boys wouldn't pass to me.
Oh wait, that was all the time.
Co-ed, actually. This year (seven-year-olds) is all co-ed. Next year we'll have a choice between an all-girl and a co-ed mostly boys league.
I really don't see what the point is of having single-sex leagues at all before 12 or so, but I'm not sure where we'll end up. Wherever her friends are.
Based solely on out-of-date anecdotal evidence, I highly recommend going to the all-girls league sooner rather than later. Unless Sally's a soccer freak.
Elaborate a little? Do your anecdotes lean toward it going bad socially, or athletically, or what?
I have out-of-date anecdotal evidence from 1989, which is expressed in 4. And I doubt that's changed much.
Do your anecdotes lean toward it going bad socially, or athletically, or what?
At that age (hell, at any age), it's hard to distinguish between the two. I think there is a tendency in co-ed sports to treat girls as "girls." That is, they're the people who have to be on the field to comply with the rules, and the object is to minimize harm rather than maximize opportunities. This ends up affecting (I suspect) coaching time spent with girls, communicated expectations, and how the little girls behave themselves (slightly cowed vs. not cowed).
I saw someone close to me go from a pretty stereotypical little girl to an absolute hitter. The changes were profound, worked their ways throughout her life, and continue to this day. If I had to point to one change (which is entirely, totally, completely, ludicrously unfair), it was the move from co-ed soccer (which she didn't really enjoy, and treated as a purely social function) to all-girls soccer (she was a beast). It absolutely transformed her, and remains the purest example I've seen of the benefits of having kids (and, obv., girls in particular) play sports. I have no idea who she'd be absent that move. (Who knows? Maybe she'd have turned out the same.)
Hrm. I can see that, but wouldn't have thought it would have kicked in so young.
Society sucks.
I'd say move to all girls' soon, too, both for the reasons Tim mentioned and because girls' soccer tends to be better. All the athletically talented boys seem to end up in baseball or football (this obviously depends on where you live), but for an athletically gifted girl, soccer is one of the main options.
The athletically talented boys stay in soccer if their talent is speed rather than strength.
This isn't soccer, but in addition to soccer, I played baseball all the way through elementary school. SCMT is right on about minimizing harm, and there was a lot of pointless standing around that I did. In sixth grade, my friend's mom organized a girls' softball league, and after a few weeks of practice, when my coach told me she wanted to have me pitch for the team, I was absolutely flabbergasted--I had no idea I was any good, because I had spent the last four years being ignored by my teammates and coaches.
14: ...and if their school doesn't have track or cross country. In other words, that was the situation at the two high schools I attended.
No, it's true in my experience at least. Many of the most athletically talented kids I knew growing up stuck with soccer all the way through high school. (This group most definitely did not include me.)
At the two high schools you attended, the fastest soccer player could outrun the fastest football player? I guess we just went to different high schools.
Fast football players tend to exhibit both speed and strength. Kids whose speed is much better than their strength stick with soccer.
There can also be racial issues involved, or at least there were at my high school.
In other words, kids who are fast but also very small often stick with soccer. I might agree to that. But as athletes mature, strength and speed become somewhat correlated, so I don't know what the contention really gets anyone.
It's just an observation. And it does depend on where you live, as Cala noted.
But! I am coming to enjoy soccer, and do not mean to hate on its players. Zidane y va marquer!
The soccer/cross-country/track thing is about speed over middle-distance, not sprinters, for the most part. I used to be on a track/cross-country mailing list and soccer came in for a lot of criticism for draining away potentially talented middle-distance runners. (The complaints weren't entirely convincing, but were consistent.)
Of course it depends on the area. If the school has a huge football tradition, then all the good athletes of any kind want to play football, and the fast athletes want to become strong, and the strong athletes want to become fast. If the school doesn't have a football tradition, then football is a humongous amount of effort that isn't paid back by adulation from the townspeople, so fast athletes will stay in the sport where quickness is rewarded and strength is less important.
If the school doesn't have a football tradition, then football is a humongous amount of effort that isn't paid back by adulation from the townspeople, so fast athletes will stay in the sport where quickness is rewarded and strength is less important.
Right, this is the situation I'm familiar with.
Quickness is rewarded in most if not all sports, certainly in both football and soccer. Speaking as a former football player in a metropolitan area not known for adulation of local high school football players, I think hallway status and mild filial approval are sufficient in turning wingers into wide receivers. But that's just my experience, and I may be quite ignorant of the many strong high school soccer programs throughout this fine nation.
At the school I went to, many of the football players played soccer in the off-season for conditioning; it was a secondary sport rather than a focus. This was also true at a friend's rival high school in Houston, who explained what offsides meant to his opponents in the course of the game because they didn't know, they were just the football team told to cross-train.
Soccer and football are both fall sports, right? How could football players play soccer for off-season conditioning? Or do you mean club soccer?
soccer was a spring sport in my area of the country as well, I suspect for the reason Cala gave.
I live in England, where anyone who can play footie (that's soccer to you) does, but the class division comes with the choice between the round ball (soccer) and the egg ball (rugby). The young Snees plays both, but we prefer the egg ball because you get a better sort of people at the matches. Also, he happens tto be crap at football, whereas rugby lets him use his bulk in certain situations.
We'll have arrived as a democracy when the rugby dad counts a bit. Unofrtunately, the rugby dad here is usually a member of the house of lords.
Huh. Football players at my school used wrestling and track for conditioning.
Spring sport here, too. They also ran track, also a spring sport.
Those too, at mine, and also lacrosse. Track was my conditioning sport. Only one guy on the football team--a guard--also played soccer.
For the few kids who were devoted primarily to soccer, the club teams were much more important than our high school team, I think.
Weird. I had no idea sports had different seasons in different areas.
Really, I think we should junk all high school football programs, and keep kids in class until 4:30 or 5. But I enjoyed playing it. Anyway, it's as likely to happen as I am to get published in Harpers this month.
At my school soccer was very much the sport of rich white kids; the team was composed of a mixture of them and illegal immigrants. Football was primarily Hispanic but with a handful of black guys who were invariably the best players on the team. There were also a few white guys, but never the same ones who played soccer (since the seasons were the same). I went out for football my freshman year but quit after I got injured before the first game.
Football players used track for off-season conditioning at my high school. The crew team used cross-country for the same reason.
At my school soccer was very much the sport of rich white kids; the team was composed of a mixture of them and illegal immigrants. Football was primarily Hispanic but with a handful of black guys who were invariably the best players on the team.
This was true of my high school as well, except that it contained virtually no Hispanic or black students. Which is to say, soccer was the sport of the rich white kids (this includes Asians), and football was the sport of the non-rich white kids and the extremely strong kids of all races. Basketball was the sport of drug-dealers and complete assholes, plus the three or four black guys at the school, and usually won 1 or 0 games every year.
the rugby dad here is usually a member of the house of lords.
Huh, I thought rugby was rougher than soccer. The few people I've known who played it were australians or kiwis, who seemed to take "Hurt me, and I will also hurt you" as their motto. They were always showing up at work with their noses bent sideways.
Nice, LB -- how old is Sally? We have tried the young'un on the soccer a bit when she was 4 and 5 without it really "taking". Maybe we ought to give it another chance. She seems to be digging the more solitary sports like roller skating and bicycling but I fear this could be me and my wife projecting our own lack of socialization onto our daughter as much as any authentic antisocial animus on her part.
Just turned seven -- the program she's in takes six and seven year olds, but we didn't get organized to do it last year.
I think 4 or 5 is way too young for any kind of team sport - probably 7 is the earliest age for coping with anything resembling tactics. Henry played two seasons of mixed soccer before the club switched to single-sex teams. There certainly wasn't any reluctance to pass to the girls - on the contrary there were two girls who were the fastest in the team and scored most of the goals. I didn't notice the games becoming any rougher when they became boys-only.
The parents I recall from kids' soccer were a mixed bag -- each one wanted it to be a fun experience for his or her kids, and each had his or her own idea about exactly what constituted a "fun experience." Ideas ranged from "playing well with others" to "full NCAA scholarship." About the doughnuts: one woman was a great hit when it was her turn to bring sliced oranges for the team -- she brought chopped mixed fruit for the parents as well and an impromptu brunch broke out on the sidelines. That was once over the course of about 10 seasons (two kids, five seasons per).
39: Huh, I thought rugby was rougher than soccer. The few people I've known who played it were australians or kiwis, who seemed to take "Hurt me, and I will also hurt you" as their motto.
Rugby is rougher. It's also much posher. The public school and officer classes are comfortable with enjoying their violence un-sublimated.
("Hurt me and I will also hurt you" is a very aristocratic motto).
LB: Now you'll have to bake cookies. Soccer ball shaped cookies. With frosting and detail. Or the other soccer moms will talk about you behind your back and wonder why your child isn't signed up for the Olympics Training Summer Camp yet, because their children were signed up in utero...
44: To be clear, the motto was more like "Hurt me; also I will hurt you". That is, it wasn't a cause and effect thing, but a description of how they wanted to spend Saturday afternoon. Still an aristocratic attitude, I guess, since I gather from reading "Among the Thugs" (my only information on that subculture) that the lager lout's attitude is more like "Hurray, I'm going to hurt you!" Of course, now I'm comparing players to fans.
According to my British friends, rugby is rougher on the field than soccer but still considered the more gentlemanly of the two sports, probably because soccer hooligans are rowdier than rugby hooligans.
Or because it's the preferred sport of the upper classes as per 44.
re: 48
Except in Wales, and bits of southern Scotland, where it's the main sport of all classes.
I played both rugby and soccer at school, not for any school team (I wasn't good enough for either) but just as part of the general sports education at school.
Rugby is great but soccer was the sport we played outside school, for fun. And when I say played, I mean played a lot. I was a fairly bookish and not particularly sporty kid.* Despite that, from age 8 to about age 14, I spent at least 2 hours of every day playing soccer and often a lot more.
Rugby around puberty is a a lot of 'fun'. Some kids have gone through it and weigh 150lbs and have facial hair and muscles. Others, are still 90lbs and look like little kids. If you are one of the latter, being chased by one of the former, who has every intention of tackling you and smashing you flat and, say, it's the Scottish winter and being tackled will mean being slammed into dirt completely solid with ice .... then there's an incentive to run.
* I was fit and liked running, I just didn't go in for team sports much.
Rugby also has upper-class connotations in Australia. Definitely not New Zealand, though. Here we get around the different-states-of-development problem by sorting kids according to weight.
Ah, this is a topic I actually know something about. My spouse and I spent many years coaching recreational soccer -- mainly, but not exclusively, girls' teams. On the basis of that, I would generally endorse the view that the single-sex leagues are better for girls, for a variety of reasons. [LB: if you want to email me for more specifics, you're welcome to do so. I could also give you advice on how to be a good soccer parent! (Rule 1: Keep your encouragement general and avoid specific advice, unless you really know the game.)] As for the race and class issues, while it is true that soccer tends to be a white middle-class sport in the U.S., that does depend on where you are; I have coached in leagues that were pretty diverse.
soccer tends to be a white middle-class sport in the U.S.
This sounds strange from my vantage point in New Jork/New Yersey, where most of the soccer I see being played is by adults latinos. I guess I see a fair amount of children's soccer matches, where the combatants are mainly white and black.
52 - Sorry, I should have made it clear I was still talking of "children's soccer", where I think my generalization holds roughly true -- though with exceptions, as I also noted. Adult soccer is different: most of the pick-up games I have played in (in various parts of the country) have had a strong immigrant and particularly latino component.
LB, I played soccer from about 6 to about 12 years old. My first three teams were coed, and the better the team was, the more marginal my role was. I was the second-string fullback for one of these coed teams and spent most of my time making daisy chains and doing cartwheels; as I think I've mentioned before, this was about when my serious hockey-playing father gave up in despair on watching my games. When I switched to an all-girls team, at about eight or so, I started playing halfback or winger positions. I was never actually good at the game (although fast and strong) because somewhere down the line I hadn't ever developed a really aggressive instinct for winning. Maybe that had to do with those earlier coed teams, maybe some temperamental unsuitability. Dunno.
Anyway, I second the advice to get Sally onto a girls team. Also: she should watch some professional soccer on TV. I only saw professional soccer ONCE, on TV, the entire time I played; it seemed like a completely different sport, and maybe if I'd had more exposure to what the game can look like, I'd have been more inspired.
professional soccer on TV
There should be pick-up games going on in one or more parks near LB's place which are way more exciting to watch than TV. No women though.
This sounds strange from my vantage point in New Jork/New Yersey, where most of the soccer I see being played is by adults latinos.
In the absence of latinos, soccer tends to be a white middle-class sport. As opposed to a white working-class sport, or a black sport.
55 is right. If the game is of any standard at all beyond a baying mob chasing the ball (which is what you tend to get with young kids, and why the hell not), you get a much better idea watching live.
The thing is that on TV the camera tends to follow the ball, so you lose the sense of how the players off the ball are using space to build up a move. Live, you get perspective. Not just more fun to watch, but better to learn from.
There should be pick-up games going on in one or more parks near LB's place which are way more exciting to watch than TV. No women though.
Right down the hill, all summer.
There ya go. And I would expect tasty rotisserie chicken and beans to be available for munching while you watch.
See, I think a kid learning the sport should both watch the pickup games and the TV games. For one thing, the overhead view of the field gives you a more abstract sense of the spacing: those passes are tactical! When I watched my first professional game on TV, I had never seen the ball being passed back *on purpose* before.
a baying mob chasing the ball (which is what you tend to get with young kids, and why the hell not)
This is just great.
JM's right; I think one of the reasons I was never very into soccer when I played it as a kid was because I'd never seen it on TV (or even seen any serious pickup games), so I couldn't understand it as a real sport with strategy and stuff.
59: Check out my 'about LizardBreath' page.
Eh. I wouldn't try to program her soccer experience too much. If Sally enjoys soccer, she'll end up wanting to watch various matches and videos. But parents should always be aware of the Marinovich boundary.
I don't say this to be dismissive, because I thought about it a lot, in light of the fact so many people I knew, as here, took it so seriously.
I decided that it was wrong of me to be deeply involved in organizing, and becoming involved in my children's play. That my own experiences of childhood organized sports had not been important to me, and that unorganized play, of the same games, had been much more important. I organize a lot of my children's lives, it seems to me. I thought I could give this a rest.
I like IDP's (and Tim's) attitude, but I do think kids enjoy playing soccer more if they like soccer than if it's just some random activity.
I only knew one girl who thrived in coed leagues, and she was very very good, and her father was the coach.
Girls are often better than boys for the really young soccer. Alot of the preschool boys just stare into space.
Apparently my kids microsoccer league had six "assault complaints" in the last two years. I prefer broken limbs with my moral panics, though.
wrong of me to be deeply involved in organizing, and becoming involved in my children's play
Crazy talk! If I ever have children, I'm pretty sure about 30% of the reason will be that I want to train up those little tykes in some sport.
"Apparently my kids microsoccer league had six "assault complaints" in the last two years."
Assault complaints in what sense? Kids getting upset because the game got a bit rough? or something genuinely serious?
69 -- I have some dreams of grooming the young'un for tournament Scrabble (tm)...
