Here are Wednesdays and Thursdays stories!
Sunny and I have been the coaches all week. Tonight we totally turned it over to Saquib. Saquib is on Crew and he did an amazing job. We took a back seat and told the kids this is your head coach, listen to him. He led all the drills and kept the kids completely calm and engaged when they were not in the game. He set them up to practice kickingtheir goals while they were waiting. He was a head coach tonight and did great. -Rae on behalf Saquib This is about last night’s Parents vs Coaches. I’m not very skilled at soccer, but I love playing defense at soccer. So, one of the parents came charging at me and I sidestepped and then they made a goal. I felt disappointed because everyone was doing something and I didn’t so I decided I was going to try harder. I guess I persevered, which was our value. So the next time a parent was coming at me and I sacrificed my tummy and blocked the ball and it didn’t go in the goal. -Fatima, Crew Tonight we had a great Mom’s game and Steph scored a goal, so that is exciting. It was really fun to interact with the moms and they all really got along with each other. We split them up so they weren’t on the team they expected to be on and it was really fun. -Lindsey, Parents Team Tonight was really great for the simple fact that the first 3 nights were really disheartening for a lot of the participants, especially when it came to scrimmages; we just kept getting our butts kicked. It was getting to the kids. But tonight something really clicked and we had a turnaround night. Our goal was to score a goal first and foremost, and then to not concede any goals and then to add in some sportsmanship. It seemed like all the kids needed was to know they were being encouraged and then the momentum kind of sprung from there. We actually took the lead during the game and the kids were really excited and so was I. I think I took ran on the field with kids screaming like a lunatic. Then the quietest girl on the team who I didn’t think wanted to be here at all turned out to be an awesome defender. She ran to the sideline to say, “coach are we doing a good job?” I told her we were doing awesome and she ran back to her position where her and the other quietest girl on the team were high-fiving. Then at the end when we did Team Time, another team member said, “This was the best game I was ever part of.” -Tom, Green Division During the scrimmages, one of the players on the other team, not my team, scored a goal and they were all so excited they were piling on top of each other. But then I looked around and saw that some of my players were in the pile too. I asked them what they were doing and they said, “This is my cousin’s team!” or “My friend is on this team”. I told them they had great sportsmanship. -Ian, Blue Division Last night we were doing the drills demonstration and some kid looked up and said “there’s a rainbow.” And if you have ever looked at 50 6 and 7 year olds all staring up into the sky and saying “It’s a rainbow! It’s a rainbow!” all in unison, well it’s a miraculous and beautiful thing. -Cate, Blue Division One of the dads who has been here all along, who has 2-3 kids in the program, came up to me to say, “This week’s been awesome! You know the past 2-3 years it just feels like it’s been getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And this year it’s great, it’s nice and small again.” I told him, “Actually, it’s been record attendance all week.” He was blown away. It is just such a testament to the quality of our volunteers to be able to run a this so smoothly with so many kids, that it seems like less kids! -Brian, Coaching Director Last night 11 of our 15 Crew kids went to Flatbread. We did a lot bowling and ate a lot of pizza. And on our way home, one of the kids said, “You know, it was just like in the movies when we go out to celebrate. We were all in jerseys and we were having fun.” And it was true, it was great. -Tory, Crew Leader We had a really good night tonight. We served hot tea which could have gone either way on a 90 degree day, but parents loved it. The parents were talking about how tired their kids are after Soccer Nights is over and how fast they fall asleep when they get home. And they were all yelling out, “5 minutes!” “No 10 minutes!” “No I have to carry my child home!”. It was fun to see them all talking all across the bleachers about this. -Claire, Parents Team We are the Champion Cheetahs and we just had such a great night tonight. Our team had been really down because they hadn’t scored any goals and hadn’t won any scrimmages and tonight they got their first goal and believed they kind of won of it. And it was a really good goal; one of the girls passed it across the goal and then her teammate was there to finish it. They were all super happy and then the game ended right after that. When we came together for team time, one of the girls said that we should do a cheer for the other team who lost. We all got together and huddled and cheered for the other team. There was just a lot of good attitudes. We really achieved our goals of looking up and spreading out. I feel like we made so much progress. -Ana, Green Division We have the team the Blue Rockets and they all just love each other. They are getting along wonderfully and they are encouraging and they are making deals with one another: “Ill be striker this time and you’ll be striker next time and then we’ll switch.” They are really excited to do Team Time. All in all, really good things are happening in the blue division. -Elissa, Blue Division
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Here are stories from Tuesday!
I’m with the Parents Pals and we’ve been hanging on the sidelines with the parents, especially a lot moms. Tonight we did henna, which is temporary tattoo that is popular in a lot of cultures in here. So I started drawing and then before you knew it a whole crowd had appeared. I was really impressed with the cooperation. It’s usually a madhouse, but the parents were so quick to step in and help do henna for each other. They found creative solutions to solve problems and we were all cooperating together and had great conversations and beautiful hands. -Dani, Parents Team Registration has been distracting you throughout the week trying to get the check out sheets correct. Thank you for your patience. I think we’ve worked things out and it’s going pretty smoothly which is great. -Grant, Registration Today one of the things we talked about on my team was good communication and what that entailed was cheering your team on while you were on the sidelines and not playing. And THIS came out of one of the little girls on our team who was on the sidelines. It's a call and response, so you'll have to help me. Our teams name is arsenal We are gonna score a goal We don’t wear no mini- skirts We just wear our soccer shirts We don’t play with Barbie dolls Because we’re kicking soccer balls. -Nick, Green Division I had a kid who got a cut on his knee and we were cleaning him up. The bandages were a little small to start out with so we weren’t off to a great start. But then I showed him an alcohol strip and he had never seen one of those before. I told him to close his eyes and count to three. When I wiped his cut he screamed worse than he did when he got the cut. He pulled himself back together and then we did again until we got it all clean and he was good to get back in the game, 5 small Band-Aids later. It was a great example of applying our value of perseverance tonight on and off the field. -Tay, Orange Division I want to talk about two amazing kids, Joseph and Maddox. Joseph was so encouraging. When I talked about the drills all the kids were saying they were boring and had a bad attitude, but Joseph told his teammates, “No guys, if we do good in the drills, we’ll do good in the game.” After the scrimmage I asked all the kids how we did and how we could improve. Joseph said we did good dribbling and pacing but we need to improve the pace and timing. He was the All Star for the night. Now I want to talk about Maddox. I told the kids during the game when I blew the whistle no one was going to go out of the field. The other kids weren’t listening but when I blew the whistle, Maddox was right there by my side saying “I’m respecting you I’m respecting you.” -Sunny, Blue Division I’m going tell what other people are saying about Crew. I walk around and hear everyone here tell me how amazing all the crew guys are. And not to single out one person, but Sreeshti had people walking up to her saying “Is she really only in high school? She is so professional.” And when I was talking to parents in the stands they were really excited to know that their kids, who are in the 5th 6th and 7th grades, will be able to still be a part of Soccer Nights once they are too old for the program. -Steve, Crew Here are the stories from last night, Monday June 23. Thanks to everyone for making it a great night.
One thing that went well in Crew today was..it was FUN. I learned how to do drills. I knew before, but I know better now. It went smooth and it was awesome. -Aamir, CREW Crew is the younger former of coaches. We’re assistant coaches and we’re developing skills to be a real coach. So my story is about a girl on my team. Her name is Hannah. During the game I said, “Hey ‘montanta’ can you go up to the ball. She went up half way and then turned around with a serious look on her face and said, “What did you call me?” I froze and said “Uhh I called you Montana”. She replied, “Don’t you ever call me that”. I learned my lesson the hard way. -Alex, CREW I’m on the logistics team and for the first time ever for the logistics team, with the registration team’s help, we got everything cleaned up and put away early enough to have a debrief. What we talked about when we debriefed? Just how smoothly everything went. -Brian, Logistics Tonight for the first time ever while volunteering at Soccer Nights, I heard the words “Yes I had a 100% checkout”. It was music to my ears and it’s the goal for Soccer Nights this week. In fact, it wasn’t everyone, BUT a bunch of teams made sure that their kids got checked out. It was really impressive. -Grant, Registration I was a parent pal last year and one of our goals was to get the parents to interact. If you look up at the bleachers you will probably notice that the parents are kind of spread out and sit mostly with their friends. Dani had the idea of doing a game with parents. So we did something called Human Bingo where you have to go around, talk to people, find things out about them, and write their name down, and then you win prizes when your sheet is full. First, we handed them out and no one was getting up. They were just asking their friends nearby them. Then this one woman who was sitting by herself got up, came to another group to start playing the game, and then every started playing! Tons of people got to meet new people and they were really excited. -Katie, Parents Team We had a great night tonight. We had a lot of kids and a lot of volunteers. I wanted to talk about how awesome the volunteers were this evening. One volunteer noticed that there was no water in our bin. She told me and then went to find someone to fill it. Two other volunteers started cleaning everything up while all the kids were in large group. -Kai, 3-5 Year Olds Some of the girls were playing defense and were getting really bored because the ball was at the other side of the field for most of the game. They were getting hungry and really wanted snack, specifically cereal. We got creative and channeled their energy for cereal into a cheer to keep them focused on the game. -Cara, Blue Division As usual I always have a hard kid, who doesn’t want to listen, and a shy girl. Before the scrimmage, I was working with the girl telling her to kick the ball and she said, “I cant kick the ball. Whenever I try to it goes to the left or to the right but not the direction that it should go.” I gave her a few pointers and then when she was doing the drill she started nailing it every time. Then in the scrimmage, I asked her where she wanted to play. She told me she just wanted to stand and play defense. I told her, “But you are a good striker.” She asked me what a striker was and I explained that that was the person who shoots the goals. So she went and during the scrimmage, she got the ball, she stopped it, and then passed it directly to her team so that they could score, which was exactly what one of our goals was. At the end of the scrimmage during our debrief I asked the team, “who on the team was doing exactly what we were asking for? If I had to give a gold medal who should we give it to?” They all in unison said, “Pheobe!” She smiled and buried her head and said, “no, not me.” She’s coming out of her shell and becoming a great player. -Manny, Green Division One of our responsibilities tonight was to decide on a Team Name. So we started just soliciting ideas. The first idea was Argentina. I said “No, that not a team name, it’s a country name. No country names.” Then a kid suggested Pakistan, another South Africa. Then one kid heard another team say that their name should be the cheetahs. Another kid heard another team say that their team should be the lightning bolts. So we eventually became the Orange Lightening Cheetahs. -Chris, Orange Division |
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July 2015
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