A Georgia Girl in Germany

Benjamin had his introduction to organized sports this spring, with the 3-year-old soccer league. The nice thing about this league was that the teams only practiced--no games…which made our Saturday schedules a little less congested (though not entirely so). He showed up to the first soccer practice with his own ball, and seemed to enjoy kicking it around the gym. But as soon as one of his teammates kicked it, he came unglued. For each subsequent practice, he left his ball at home and used the team balls. They were all the same, so it didn’t matter who had which one since we couldn’t tell them apart.

They did lots of simple drills, basically finding different ways to kick the balls: kick them into the goal, kick them into cones, kick them while running the length of the gym, etc. Once they were playing “Red light, Green light,” and Coach Lyn told them green meant to kick the balls slowly, while red meant to stop. Benjamin marched right up to her, pointed his finger at her, and told her that YELLOW meant slow, not green. We all got a kick out of how precise he was with what the colors mean!


Of course, Benjamin didn’t always want to do the drills quite how his coaches were describing. He liked ensuring he’d knock over the cones by pushing the ball with his hands.

He’d take breaks sitting on the ball.

And when they did their warm-up run around the gym, Coach Lyn encouraged them to follow her and try to catch her. Benjamin had a solution for that: cut the corners and get ahead of her to take the lead! At least it got him moving!!


He even enjoyed making “ice cream cones” with a ball and cone, then would insist that I try it before he’d head back out to participate more.

But, yes, even with all his unique distractions, he managed to run and kick the ball some like you’d expect to see during a soccer practice.



Love how he sticks his tongue out when he kicks the ball! Too cute!!


One of his favorite activities was to “take a break,” climb on the balance beam, and take a sip of water. Of course, being a little monkey, he had to climb up and down completely on his own, which always made the water break last four times longer than it really needed to.

Even after his frequent water breaks, and running around for only 10 to 15 minutes of the 45-minute practice session, his favorite part of practice was always getting juice at the end.


His end-of-season party was rather simple. He received a medal (which he refused to wear around his neck), and devoured a cupcake. Definitely the highlight of soccer!





Couldn’t resist sharing this photo of my older monkey and one of her more common activities during Benjamin’s practices.

Labels: Benjamin, MacKenzie