Thursday's Stories

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.”