Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Sports

 
We thought it would be a good time for Stephen to start exploring the world of organized sports.  At almost 7, we figured he was ready to learn, and we decided that soccer would be a good place to start - he loves balls and running, so it seemed logical!  We found a buddy league that meets on Sunday afternoons for skills work, and then 45 minutes of scrimmages. 
 
Our first week, Stephen had one buddy, and was a little hesitant, so Daddy went out and helped.  Stephen has demonstrated an excellent aptitude for dribbling the soccer ball in a straight line.  Steering and big kicks are works in progress, still.

This is just to give a good shot of how cute Stephen was in his soccer uniform.  He loves it.

Our second week, the first buddy wasn't there, so we were assigned TWO buddies, and they are awesome.  These two young ladies are speech pathology majors at a local university, and are so excited to work with Stephen (and he LOVES them!).

(Stephen was trying to read what his shirt was saying while he was supposed to be scrimmaging.  Silly boy!
 That second week, he scored his first goal!  I wish I had gotten a picture of the pride on his face, because he was so excited.  During week 3, he scored 2!

Our other new accomplishment is this:

Not totally independent yet, but he's been doing really well floating like this, so he's finally starting to relax more.

Soccer runs through mid October, but then starts up again in April, so I think we'll stick with it.  He has been telling us with his talker that he likes playing soccer.  We love that he's having so much fun and learning new skills in the process!