Soccer Nights

Jane, Curriculum Volunteer, Orange Division- “So Alice and I are the curriculum people for orange division, and today we were taping up the dream bubbles for our teams. And we were really moved by the things they had to say about their dreams for the world. We had some really good ones like, “I wish every child had a family,” “I wish people weren’t poor,” “I wish there were free houses,” and “I wish people would stop using cars.” But then another one was “I wish everyone had a car.” It was really awesome and we had a great time doing it. 

Brian, Division Leader, Blue Division- So we had a particularly nice moment after curriculum time when the crowns were being given out. The kids are getting to the stage where they are really proud of their crowns and they’re competing quite a bit for them. But Jared who was king this evening was awarded a crown for good sportsmanship and being a good team member, and he actually told his coach it’s ok, you can give it to one of my teammates instead, so he got to be king for that. I thought it was very sweet of him to be that selfless. I was really impressed. 

Diego, Team Coach, Green Division-[Chris, Green Division Leader]: “I don’t know if you guys know this, but Diego’s here for a few months from Brazil learning English. [Diego]: I don’t what to say. Thank you, thank you. I don’t know what to say because I don’t speak very well English yet, but I’m learning. Thank you so much.” 

Jadson, Assistant Coach, Red Division- There’s this girl named Sarah. She was really excited and 
 ready to learn. She was enthusiastic. And she made a lot of progress in passing and especially shooting, so I thought that was interesting. She was happy every time she made a goal. 

Katie, Lead Volunteer, Parent Pals- [Kaiti, North Cambridge Site Coordinator]: “I’d like to shout out that the parent pals spent the entire night collecting evaluations from parents, and this is the most we’ve ever gotten back.” [Katie]: “The parents just appreciate you guys so much and said how the kids come home every night asking for more Soccer Nights and they just love it. So, be encouraged. Anyway, we really loved what this evaluation said. This woman says, “It’s been a great opportunity for the parents to play soccer as well. It broke the barrier of cultural taboos that women and men could play together. And she goes on to say, it really felt like a respectful and welcoming community.” And I just really loved that the parents felt like they were part of Soccer Nights too. There was another one in there that said, “Can the parents be playing the whole night while the kids are playing?” It was just really nice to see.

Alex, Division Leader, Red Division- “Nadia is a logistics person that I somehow recruited, and yesterday she learned how to referee and she didn’t even know how to play soccer. And then today she also helped out with drills and the scrimmage, so I just wanted to give a shout out to Nadia for expanding her logistics skills beyond just logistics.”

 Joyoon, Volunteer, 3-5 year olds- “This actually happened yesterday, but we made some progress in expressing our emotions in the 3 to 5 year old group. We can all learn this song. It goes like this, “Hello, hello, hello, how are you? Hello, hello, hello, how are you?” Then you point to one person who displays an emotion. For example, “I’m sad.” Then the rest of the group acts their version of being sad. So it’s great! We’re good at emotions now.”

Tory, Lead Volunteer, Curriculum- “Goodness, Alice, and Daniel helped put together these amazing field boards. We were in there sticking so much tape everywhere. And it was really awesome of them to put in the extra effort to make all the boards catch up.”

Brian, North Cambridge Coaching Director- “The volunteer king tonight was nominated by his division leader- he’s in the orange division. Apparently this coach had a hard team, and he was really consistent in giving positive feedback and had a really good tone and good rapport. This person is Dan Persson.” 


 

Cara, Team Coach, Red Division- When it started raining, I told all the kids it was a monkey shower because that’s what I used to call it when I was growing up. And then one of the girls said, “It’s time for a monkey dance!” So we all started dancing, which has nothing to do with soccer, but it was awesome. 

Liz, Assistant Coach, Blue Division- While we were all sharing our dreams for our neighborhood, this girl named Amanda said in a quiet voice that her dream was for her neighborhood to be peaceful. Everyone quieted down to hear her and then shared ways they could actually make the neighborhood peaceful. So it was great because Amanda felt like she had something to contribute, and it brought the whole team together. Amanda was queen of the night because of that. 

Paula, Division Leader, Orange Division- “Hi guys! So today I had a good chat with one of the parents. He came up to me right after the parents’ game. He said that he really enjoyed playing, and he asked me when the next session was because he just wanted to come for the parents’ game. And I told him, then he said he’d make it. Then he whispered to me, “I’m 55 years old, but I still love this stuff.” And he gave me a high five. 

Monty, Team Coach, Green Division - “So my story is part of the queen of the night. During the scrimmages we were doing 6 vs. 6, but we had 7 players, and obviously when that happens, nobody wants to step out. But one girl decided to sit out so everyone else could play, and that’s why she became queen of the night.”

Kaiti, Site Coordinator, North Cambridge- I have something to add. When I realized we were short on assistant coaches, I called Liz to see if she'd be able to help out tonight. And she did, so I wanted to give her a shout out for being willing to help out at the last minute. Thanks Liz!

Kai, Volunteer, 3-5 year olds- Many of the 3-5 year olds really enjoy playing duck duck goose because it’s fun to run around in circles. To make it more interesting, they like to come up with new words to use like ketchup ketchup mustard, apple apple banana, or peanut butter peanut butter jelly. But then they get confused and you get things like ketchup ketchup apple. So they’re really funny! 

Grant, Lead Volunteer, Registration- Our story is just that we had 160 kids on the field on a rainy day, which is pretty impressive. 

Tory, Lead Volunteer, Curriculum- “This parent came up to me at the registration table and she said she’s telling all her friends about Soccer Nights because it’s so well organized. And because it’s so well organized, she’s telling everyone to come and participate in July.”

Stephanie, Lead Volunteer, Parent Pals- We got to talk to a lot of parents today, and the stories ranged from really great to really great. One mom told us her dream is to have Soccer Nights for her neighborhood. Now I just have to find out what neighborhood that is so we can make that happen. Another mom told us her dream for her neighborhood is to hold weekly teas where parents could come and talk about their kids’ futures. I told her I’d totally be up for helping to make that dream come true!

Cara, Team Coach, Red Division- “I love the red division because the kids are hilarious and awesome. The kids actually had attention spans for the most part for the curriculum and drills. And they call it curricu-William which  I thought was awesome. Their dreams for their families included: going to Hawaii, going to the park, and for dad to come home.”

Sam, Assistant Coach, Blue Division- “Okay, so I got to help nominate our king who was Abdullah, and I felt so proud. He’s just great. He shook hands with people. We had new team members. He welcomed them- was really into it. He wanted to share about his family and his pet turtle in Algeria. So I learned a lot of cool stuff.” 

Joyce, Assistant Coach, Orange Division- “So the queen of last night from the orange division was Ruth. And today she learned to dribble with her outside foot. And she just showed me how she did and she was like ‘Woah I just did the whole thing with my outside foot!’ And I was like, ‘Did you just learn that today?’ And she said, ‘Yeah you just taught me!’ So it was pretty cool.” 

Nick, Team Coach, Green Division- “So today we had one drill that looked like a real soccer team playing and running a drilling across the field which was awesome. In addition to that during curriculum, at the 2 minute warning we realized that no one had filled out a dream bubble because we were having so much fun talking with each other. So we managed to distribute markers. Everyone filled out a dream bubble including some of my kids helping other kids think of things to do with their family because they weren’t that that creative. And within 2 minutes we had our dream bubbles filled out, taped down, and all set. All thanks to kids helping each other out, so it was pretty sweet.” 
 
Nia, Lead Volunteer, 3-5 year olds- “We made puppets today, and I thought about bring one up here to show you, but I forgot. But we also played soccer! So at first we were just playing kick the soccer ball into the goal. And we were just in a line, and everyone had his/her turn. But then one of the boys who was probably on the older end said, ‘We want to play a game!’ And so I’m like ok! I don’t really know how to play a game, but we can try. So we separated into two teams. One team was Spiderman Soccer Team or something. And the other one was Fire. So I don’t think they knew which team they were on in the end, but it was basically chase the soccer ball. So it kind of turned into football and then fight over it. And then start over. So that was really nice.”

 Grant, Lead Volunteer, Registration- “Well registration went really well tonight. If you haven’t heard, we had 200 kids on the field tonight. That’s a really big deal. Give yourselves a round of applause for just being a coach and dealing with that. One of the issues last night was that we had to turn away some kids and waitlist them. But today we were actually able to invite some of them back for this week. We thought that we weren’t going to be to invite them back at all, but being able to be at the registration table tonight and just see how much MORE enthusiastic those kids were. They went from the disappointment of last night and not being able to come to a few of them being able to come tonight. Seeing that enthusiasm was really really cool. That was probably the
highlight of registration tonight.”  
  
Evadne, Lead Volunteer, Teens & Volunteer Check-In- “We had 100 volunteers (you guys) last night. 101 today. It’s a lot of name tags, so when we came, Doug, Andrew, Yvonne, Erik, Belinda, Kameron, and Leslie helped sort all those name tags. And later tonight, Belinda and Kameron and Leslie, who weren’t even registered to help, scanned the field for trash and helped with volunteer registration to make it smooth. So I just want to shout out to all those awesome teens that helped out.”

 Katie, Lead Volunteer, Parent Pals- “Hey, I’m Katie. Steph and I are on the Parent Pals team. So basically we get to walk around, talk to the different parents, and hear their stories. We were just really honored to hear the different dreams that these parents have for their families. One woman in particular told us about her story. She moved from Colombia and they had to come here for safety and just sort of the adversity they went through. And how they just kept working through everything that happened and got to go to law school and get their masters. It was just a really uplifting night.”