SwEeper or KeEper?

On the first day of school, the kids usually have to write a paper of some sort about what they did during the summer. Josh tells me that will be easy for him: soccer. In the past, summertime has been "off season" for Josh. But, this new team he is on doesn't ever have "off season" time. They've been doing 60 minutes of drills on their own 6 days a week, two team practices a week, two tournaments in the last 3 weeks and several scrimmages with the other USA team. What makes me laugh is that this doesn't seem to be enough for Josh. What he does during his "play" time is play soccer with his friends outside, practice shooting at the net my dad made him or plays FIFA 2010 on the PS3. He and Logan have been "working on their skills" together lately and the other day Logan brought over his Ipod touch. Josh discovered FIFA on that and insists that he now needs an Ipod touch. Oh, and I mustn't forget FIFA on Facebook.

Don't people say that too much of anything is not healthy? I absolutely feel that way - except in this case. Josh knows how to balance things. We had a 10am game Saturday in the semi-finals of the Adidas Tournament. It was an amazing game and the second half our team played like it was the World Cup. However, we lost 6 to 4. The first half, Josh played sweeper. Sweeper is the center defender. He is in charge of the defensive line. It's his job to move the line up, communicate with the other defensive players and by all means, clear the ball from the box. Well, Josh ran his guts out and had a beautiful slide in attempt to clear the ball. But, he was 1/100th of a second too late and the other team scored. Then, during the second half of the game, Josh played Keeper. This is by far his preferred position. Today was not his day. He let 3 in. Nevermind the fact that he had that many saves as well. It was the 3 that got in that haunted him all day. So (back to balancing), in order to pull himself together and clear his head, he came home and showered and then read a few chapters in Harry Potter. Can a mom complain? Really. Nothing kills a mom more than when their child gets upset over something. He had his grumpy time, but then he got on with it.

I don't often blog about my Josh. As I've said, his life consists of nothing but a whole lot of soccer. But, this summer has been full of proud mama moments for me. He deserves a post all to himself once in a while (he hates it when I blog about him).