Four Year Old Soccer- The Reality

In my HEAD four year old soccer would be like, one eight week long fall festival.  Lots of crisp fall air and beautiful trees.  Some cheering, some goal scoring... definitely NO RAIN.  Who would have four year olds play in the freaking RAIN?  THEY ARE FOUR.

It's raining, people.

Also, can I just point something out in that picture... take a close look at those kids.  I am not naming names (I don't know them) or pointing fingers (I am too lazy to edit the photo to add giant glowing arrows) but do maybe one or two of the kids in maroon look a TOUCH older than the rest?  Like that ten year old (estimate) boy in the front running with the ball?  This is a four/five league... that's all I am sayin'... (maybe they are just really large five year olds)

So anyway, it rained during our first game.  Don't we look totally into it?

I mean, look at the love of the game, just pouring off of him... (Confession, he was not feeling that well, and 9:30 is actually sorta early for us, so we had a lot of things not working in our favor)

Shockingly, the kids mostly didn't mind the rain...

Except for Henry, god bless him, who ran around the first quarter with his hands over his head saying "Um, it is RAINING WAY TOO HARD to play soccer!"  (He is his mothers child) but once we put his hooded sweatshirt under he jersey he was good to go!  He even got the ball a couple of times, kicking it down the field then looking at us like "DID YOU SEE THAT?? SOCCER!  I DID IT!"

It helped that he had quite the cheering section, even in the rain.  I think Henry had more fans than all the other players combined.  The kid is popular...

A section of his cheering squad congratulating him for a ball well kicked

As it turns out, we lost the match in a narrow defeat (it was like 15-0... although we scored ONE of those goals for them, so the score is a little misleading) but the kids had fun.  And surprisingly, even in the rain, so did all of the adults.

So... soccer.  It's not for the faint at heart, even at the age of four.  But it seems to still be enjoyable.  Who knew?