Green Hornet

Ethan’s soccer team — the Green Hornets — played their last game this weekend. Unfortunately, it was their second loss — not a particularly happy way to end the season for our little guys. They had a great season overall, with a 7-2-1 record. Our two losses were only by one goal, and we had two wins with an eight-goal margin (despite our coach’s attempts to slow down the scoring by putting the best shooters on defense and so on).


All of the boys except for one, who missed the last couple of games, scored a goal. During our second big win game, the boys made it a point to set up the two who hadn’t scored yet so that they had lots of shots on goal. And they both scored great goals as a result. 

And that’s probably what I like best about this team — the kids all play well together as a team. None of them knew each other before the season started (although one little boy lives just down the street from us), but they’ve all come together well, and really are starting to understand the benefit of teamwork. (It’s far from perfect, but they are all 6 and 7, so I wouldn’t expect them to really be there yet.) 

Ethan has done very well too. He’s gotten frustrated with coach Mom telling him where to position himself on the field (and I’ve tried to back off when he does — no, really, I have tried), and we had one poor sportsmanship issue after their first loss. But I think he now is starting to understand that sportsmanship is part of the game too (especially after being on the receiving end of poor sportsmanship by another team). 

His ball handling skills are very good — the kid can dribble, and he’s easily one of the fastest kids out there (as is his teammate Jack, which really helps the team do well). And he’s just the right amount of aggressive to get the ball back from the other team, over and over. He needs to work on shooting from further out, and on his corner kicks. If he can master those two items, he’ll be a midfielder to contend with.

We’ll be back together in the spring for the second half of our season. Ethan dislikes indoor soccer (and I don’t like the idea of him playing year-round at this age either), so he’ll be taking the winter off from playing. We’ll focus on swimming, and maybe sign up for basketball again instead. But overall, I would say signing up for the league was a successful experiment.