Soccer Star

Maya, finding her new ball on Easter morning.

Maya loves her new soccer ball. She was so excited to take it to Guillermo's soccer practice today and it's a good thing she did. 

We were running late so as we neared the field, I told Guillermo to run ahead so he could join his teammates already playing. 

When she and I reached the field, Maya started kicking her ball and then declared "I want to talk to Guillermo's coach." 

She took her ball on the field.

"Do you want to play?" he asked her.

She shook her head yes.

"What's your name?" he asked. She told him. 

"Well, line up with everyone else," he told her. 

And, she did. And for the next 45 minutes, she practiced with the team and she was so happy. 

They did a dribbling drill around three cones that ended with a shot on goal. She was last, but she didn't give up. When she kicked the ball too far ahead of her, she chased after it, but kept going. Every time she looked up, she had a smile on her face. 

At water break, I put her hair in a ponytail. 

"You like it?" she asked the coach. 

She whined once, when another kid took her ball out of the goal, and cried once when a kid purposely pulled her down, but she got back into the practice. 

For another drill, the coach had the kids run backward and dribble the ball (why you would ask a bunch of 3-4-5 year olds to do such a thing is beyond me).  Maya either didn't understand the instructions or didn't hear them, but she lined up like everyone else and started running backward, except she was without a ball. When she saw what everyone else was doing, she laughed and went back to the starting line to get her ball.

I can't wait for Wednesday. Neither can she.