Team Building

Team Building, originally uploaded by SWVirginiaDeity.

This picture was taken at one of Kate’s first spring soccer practices. If I remember correctly, the coaches had huddled the team together to come up with a team name. I’ll get back to that shortly.

After the first practice, I thought her team was going to be terrible. That, of course, would have been fine, since they were 4-year-olds and should have been out there just to run around and have fun. My first impression of the quality of her team was wrong. They went on to destroy every team that they faced. Kate unquestionably has a lot of athletic potential. She scored a lot of goals and loved to mix it up with the players (mostly boys) on the other team.

Watching Kate play soccer naturally makes me think about my own childhood. Growing up, I felt a lot of pressure to succeed at sports. And, I did. When I was 12, I won the local, district, state, and regional Elks National Hoop Shoot contests. I finished 11th at the national championship for my age group at the old Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.

But, the whole process was such a grind that I lost my drive to (attempt to) be better than everybody else at sports after that. I am so grateful to have had that experience, though. I know that it has made me a better parent. I know that I want Kate and Natalie to have fun. I know that I don’t want them making a mistake (in sports or life) and thinking about how I’m going to react to it because they feel pressure from me to be better than everybody else or above making mistakes. And I know that I will always shake my head at parents who are getting after their 4 and 5-year-olds over their play on the soccer field.

As for the team name…they went with the completely nonsensical “Purple Dogs.”