Question about soccer

Honestly, if I felt like it jeopardized my child’s health I would just not take my child.  I’d politely call and let them know he/she won’t be there.  We are doing Upward soccer, and so far I have been quite pleased with it.  Our league is at a church, and practices are during the week and games on Saturday.  They had to cancel practice once b/c we had a major downpour of rain after a long, dry summer.  While the earth soaked up a lot, there was a lot of flash flooding, and the field was too wet to play.

The reasons listed above is why we don’t do baseball.  It is way too competitive for us, and they have really late games for youngsters who should be in bed.  At least that is how it is in our area.  Upward is very non-competitive, so there is no keeping score.  It is really no big deal if we have to miss a practice or a game if something arises.

I love soccer(football to me lol) and played myself for a ladies team in England many moons ago, and I still follow the English game regularly – but I find the way the sport is taught here at the young levels is ridiculous – it is supposed to be fun, fit making and team building as far as I am concerned and here it seems to be way overdone with pushy parents and running the little ones into the ground – I don’t approve at all. Children still need to see sport as fun, and weather should dictate whether a game or training takes place or not. The conditions you describe I feel should have caused the event to be called off. I do not believe in letting little ones suffer just because the adults have some warped notion of sport. When they are older that is different, but not for the littles…..I see it everywhere, we have sport fields at the end of our road, and the littles are out there, the parents are yelling and the weather is vile – to me it is all wrong. All this training at such a young age, is setting the kids up for major knee and leg issues when they are older – no I don’t like what I see – but that is just my opinion. It is likely the same nonsense in England as well these days, I hope not – but having not lived there for a while it may have changed – but in my day and when we lived there, it was not like that at all. Linda

I agree with the above.  Sports are such a big deal in our culture, but I think it was more beneficial when I was growing up…mainly for fun, playing with the neighbors, etc. until around 5th grade when official team sports began.  We’ve resisted the urge to ‘keep up’ and fill our evenings with outside activities.  Our kids do sports, we just don’t go crazy w/it and are more focused on health/fitness.  Just my .02….no offense to sports fans…we’re just not a big on sports family:)  Gina

At that age, our coaches most likely would’ve cut it short.  We usually have cancellations due to storms or ice, etc.  But just wind probably wouldn’t cancel it.  It may not have been something they had foreseen being a problem, but like I said, it if was that miserable they’d probably leave early. 

My brother asked me to take his dd age 6 to her soccer game. I was horrified to see the way the parents were yelling at their kids. They were yelling things like “Get down there and kick that ball”, “what is wrong with you, kick the ball” and there were even parents yelling curse words at their kids. I could not believe the way these parents were acting and speaking to their kids. I wasn’t even a parent at the time, but I knew that was not how I was going to raise my kids when the time came. Even though that was a long time ago, it made a lasting impression in my mind.

Tammy