verbatim: Goal!

Soccer season is finally over, just as it was getting too darn cold to stand around on the sidelines anyhow. Pete and Julie had a very busy season.

This was Julie's first time playing on a city travel team, and she loved it. She didn't know anyone on the team going in, but now she of course does. They'll all be together again in the spring, with the same coach, so that's a comfort. They went nearly the whole season winless, until the second-to-last game (last week). Yay! They were so excited! The week before, Julie's coach had sent us all this lovely, lovely video, which is a good reminder of what really matters with the young ones.

As mentioned earlier, Pete also played on a travel team, as well as the middle school team. Luckily, his heel problem went away as soon as we got some orthotics from the podiatrist. Our chiro had said that about 60% of cases of Sever's Disease are treatable with orthotics, so we are definitely one of the lucky ones. It was like night and day. He wears them all the time now. Pete's travel team won most of their games this season but lost a couple and tied a couple more. And his middle school team was ... undefeated! It was hugely exciting. They played against the other three city middle schools as well as a few neighboring towns. The best was the day that Pete scored his first goal for that team, which happened to be at the big fancy stadium at Catholic Memorial, under the lights and everything. And even better, the next morning his name got announced over the PA at school. I can only imagine the grin that crossed his face.

The interesting thing about these two teams was that for the travel team, Pete was one of the best players on the team (according to Andy, who knows such things). It was thrilling to watch him be "the man," as Andy put it. On the other hand, he was most definitely not one of the best on the middle school team, which is mostly kids a year older than him anyway and just happens to include some really terrific players. With those guys, he really had to rise to the challenge, which is of course how you get better. So he had the best of both worlds with the two teams: one where he got to be one of the stars and one where he got to learn from and try to keep up with the stars. He'll be with his travel team and coach again in the spring, but there's no spring soccer for the middle school team.

And yesterday he went straight from his last game to ... his first basketball practice of the season. Cleats off, high-tops on. We're ready.

[Update 2/7/12: For some reason, this post is attracting the spambots big time, so I'm closing off comments. If you have something non-spammy to tell me, feel free to send me an email!]