A Clean Sheet

With the start of the school year, we are now much busier than we used to be.  Bode is doing swimming twice a week, and is still taking his piano lessons.  I also signed him up for a soccer team.  I didn't realize this team would practice twice a week with games on Saturdays.  And then Bode wanted to do cross country.  Thus, our evenings are jam-packed.  We'll be happy (or at least better rested) come the end of October.

The first cross country meet was Tuesday.  We have realized Bode is anything but a runner.  He enjoys the team, but I think it's just to hang out with some friends, which is perfectly fine.  Here's a group of the boys before the first race.

Next, we have the start of the race.  The first race was an 800-meter run.

Finally, here's a shot of Bode towards the end.  He ran the whole way and finished with a surge (a small surge).

I was impressed with the winner--the kid looked like a real runner, and I don't know if I could have beaten him.  I'll have to start timing the races and use my GPS to get the exact distance.   I'd hate to think I've reached the point where kids Bode's age are faster than me :-)

The first soccer game was this past Saturday.  Earlier in the week, Bode told me he wanted to be the goalie.  As luck would have it, the soccer club does free goalie training on Friday nights.  Thus, we decided to attend to see if Bode really liked it.  He did great, although he has to work on some of the fundamentals, but it's really the first time I've seen him excited about something (other than video games).  The team's first game was Saturday (their name is the Sabertooths).  Bode started the game as the center forward.

He did fine--got winded pretty quickly, and he (along with all the other boys) need to learn their positions better.  But I'm very impressed with the coach, and know Bode will learn a lot this season.  The team was down 1-0 at the end of the first half.  At the start of the second half, we saw Bode putting on the goalie shirt and the gloves.  Oh boy.

He did surprisingly well.  No one scored on him, and he had some great saves.  But he also had some help from 1) a shot off the post and 2) some misses by the other team.

Still, he did great.  He does have to learn when to come off the line and when not to.  He'd end up in no-man's land a number of times, but otherwise, he's out little Hope Solo...oh, wait, that's not a very good comparison :-)

Back to the grind tomorrow.  Pleasant week to all.