Outdoor soccer season officially started last night with the skills assessment and team picking. Elliott is playing on base this year, and really looking forward to it. I mentioned it to one of his friend's Moms before the deadline, so she signed her son up. I misplaced another friend's mom's phone number or I would have called her as well. We ended up seeing her this week, though, and Elliott mentioned it then. I told her to call the next morning to see if her son could still join since they hadn't made teams yet. He was able to join. The boys were soo excited! Their other close friends aren't part of military families so they can't play with them, but three kids works out nicely for carpools and such.
Elliott convinced his dad to sign up as a coach. He thinks he may be in over his head, because he doesn't remember the rules that well. He's done some training now, though, and was reminded of rules he had forgotten. He also has two other guys that are supposed to help him coach (although neither of them showed up last night, so hopefully they prove more reliable in the future!), so maybe they will know more about soccer. For seven and eight year olds, it's more about having fun and practicing team work anyway, though.
Since the coaches did the assessments together and then sat down and picked teams, Carl was able to get both of Elliott's friends on his team as well. Since we have a 20+ mile drive it's great that they are all on the same team so we can carpool. Plus the three of them are all good friends, so they are excited to play together, since they don't know any of the other kids (the vast majority of the kids playing live on base).
