The Littlest Soccer Players

As soon as we found out there would be a Pittsburgh Riverhounds soccer camp on our side of town, we signed up all 3 kids. It would be an opportunity for Juliana to improve her skills and the boys would be introduced to the basics.

I am used to Juliana being one of the tallest girls in the group, but at soccer camp ages 7-up were all together and she was the youngest one. I thought she might be intimidated by the taller girls and the boys, but she held her own. She participated in every drill and was a good sport when she lost to older kids. She loved every minute of camp – and with temperatures in the 90’s each day – that’s some dedication. She was sad when the week ended and can’t wait for soccer season to start.

The boys were in a small group of 4 and 5-year olds. They were excited to have new soccer gear and ran to join their coach on the first day and start camp. But the enthusiasm was short lived. With each water break, they were less excited about returning to the group. We finally bribed them with playground time on the first day to get them to finish camp. The second night they had a different coach and they participated more and seemed to have fun.

The third night was miserable – it was so hot (heat index near 100) that I ended up in the van with the AC running and Ruslan joined me. Camp ended early that day due to storms. The final day, Ruslan called it quits early, but Wyatt continued and finished out the camp. Wyatt definitely enjoyed soccer camp more than Ruslan.

I love sitting back and watching them together. As they ran back to the group after a water break, Ruslan raced to catch-up with Wyatt and then the two of them slowed to walk the remaining distance. I was busy practicing with my distance lens (I don’t use it very often) so we could stay back from the practice area. I ended up with lots of out-of-focus pictures that night, fortunately most of these are ok (I left one blurry in the series).

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