Once again Thomas has something to be proud of in soccer!  The previous weekend he scored his first-ever goal in a game, but it was a scrimmage game due to the other team having too few players; he was one of ours that played for the other team to at least not waste the trip to the field.

This week, he scored his first goal in a legitimate game!  I wish I’d had the video camera; it was picture-perfect.  A teammate had moved the ball down to scoring position, took a shot, and had it deflected.  Thomas saw the opportunity, ran in fast, kicked hard, and the ball flew up and into the goal, just wide of the goalie.

It’s hard to describe how excited we were.  I was jumping around yelling, he was pumping his fists, and he spent the rest of the game playing his hardest, getting in some good defensive plays and running fast.  I was so proud!

A taste of success in soccer is going a long way for Thomas.  Since he’s finally getting some involvement in successful plays, he’s getting some more passes and putting more effort into his play, which is paying off with yet more success.  It’s a positive vicious circle — would that make it a virtuous circle?  Maybe I’ll just fall back on my engineering degree and call it positive feedback.

Tags: Soccer, Thomas

Thomas scored his first goal in an actual soccer game on Saturday!  In an interesting twist, he scored it against his own team, but that was a good thing.  Illness has hit several of the schools in our area, and the opposing team only had four kids show up, and they needed a minimum of 6.  We had 10, so some of our kids went over to the other side to play just so the game time wouldn’t be wasted.

Thomas got to play goalie for a while and blocked a few shots, and let two go through.  After that he played defender for quite a while and successfully disrupted some “opponent” attacks.  Finally, at the end of the game he was put in at forward, and that was when he got his goal.

Since neither side was running with many subs, Thomas was quite a bit fresher than the other kids on the field.  He was able to dribble past his defender and take a shot on goal, which bounced off the goal support.  He tried again and it went wide.  After that he got the ball again and took two more shots, one of which the goalie deflected and the other one which went between the goalie’s legs.

Thomas was very thrilled to finally have scored in a game, and it’s motivated him to up his practice and his aggressiveness on the field, which is awesome.  If we can build on that, he should continue to get better and score more goals in the future!

Tags: Soccer, Thomas