Thursday's Stories!

Another day, and more stories to share!! As usual, add a comment to this blog post if you have a story you'd like to tell. We'll give one lucky storyteller a gift certificate to JP Licks. 


Bassim  – Team Coach, Red Division (as told by Division Leader, Mera)
“Tonight the curriculum theme was encouragement. They were going around in a circle encouraging one another. There were two girls on his team, Allison & Megan*. Megan said to Allison, “Allison, you’re a good friend.” Bassim asked if the girls were friends before Soccer Nights. Megan said, ‘No, we just met on Monday, and we’re going to have a play date this weekend.’ Soccer Nights. We’ve built relationships.”

Matt – Team Coach, Blue Division
“We’ve had about 10-12 kids all week. For the scrimmage, getting substitutions has been tough. No one really wants to be the substitute, and no one really wants to go out. At the beginning, I just picked two random kids, and one of the girls was disappointed that she had to go out. So her teammate said, ‘I’ll go out instead. Do you want to come in?’ The girl at first said, ‘No not really…actually, yeah I would like to go in.’ 

At another point, earlier in the night, a teammate had her shoe untied. The same girl came over and said to the girl, ‘Oh! I’ll tie your shoe for you.’ And the girl tied her shoe.  

It was good times in the Blue Division.”

Tim – Team Coach, Green Division
“One of the girls who hasn’t enjoyed the soccer drills as much, really enjoys the curriculum time. I know it’s a drag for a lot of the kids. But when we were coming up with words for the team, she was all over it saying words like ‘Perseverance...and cooperation…and trustworthiness.’ And she’s only in 5th grade! It was really cool for her to get involved.”

Shawn – Assistant Coach, Orange Division
“One of the kids-- from the beginning-- as been one of the biggest hand-full. And today, Coach Christine, had a little talk with him about being a good role model. And I had a talk with him that I would be seeing if he was encouraging people, and that he would get a gold medal if he encouraged people. We’ve never seen such a dramatic shift in a kid…from being a hellion, to being the biggest cheerleader for his team and the other teams. At first it was poured on so quickly the other kids weren’t sure if they should believe it, because the kids know the boy’s behavior. But he kept encouraging people the entire night. He gave high-fives to his teammates, and after the scrimmage that his team lost, we went and congratulated the other team. It was a total 180. I think the whole team grabbed onto the encouragement value tonight. It was really cool to see.”

Danielle – 3-5 year olds
“I was hanging out with the kid who speaks Spanish. I speak a little Portuguese, so we tried to make it work. It was a little awkward, but we made it! He asked me why I speak the language, and I told him I have Brazilian friends. There was another kid there from Algeria, who didn’t understand what we were saying or playing, so I asked him, ‘Do you understand?’ The kid said, ‘Yeah, Yeah.’ I knew he didn’t, so then I said to him, ‘Do you speak Arabic?’ He said, ‘Yeah!’ So I spoke a little Arabic to him, and his face lit up! It was really cool. I’m a language nerd, so I like that kind of thing.”

Brian – Lead Volunteer, Logistics
“When we were cleaning things up a few 3-5 year olds asked me, ‘Are you a coach?’ I said to them, ‘No, I’m a logistics guy.’ They said, ‘What’s that?!’ I told them, ‘We carry stuff, like goals, and fill water.’ They asked, ‘Do you carry things like t-shirts?’ I told him, ‘Yeah, Yeah. We do that.’ They kept listing things off. It was really fun.”

Grant – Lead Volunteer, Registration & Snacks
“Today on our spreadsheets we had no mistakes, which is amazing. We continue to have amazing volunteers. I appreciate all of them.”

Michaiah – Lead Volunteer, Parent Pal
“So we were giving out jerseys to parents for the scrimmage, which was a little chaotic. The funniest one, was when I gave a jersey to this woman, who is 4 feet tall. She was wearing this long skirt. I was unsure when I gave it to her. She pulled her skirt, and showed me her sneakers! She pulled me to the side and said, ‘Now, what do I do?!’
We just had really good connecting time with parents tonight. We have a parent Olympic ring that we go around and talk to parents. We only got to one parent, who was so open with us. It was like a counseling session, it was so great!”


*names of children have been changed