Nice! Enjoying the game and feeling confident in your abilities at a young age can hopefully translate to a willingness to stick with in the teen years. But that sort of big-picture thinking can wait. For now--enjoy being a proud Papa.
Temper your enthusiasm with the thought that for the great majority of players (and their parents) the last game played at any level is a loss.
Why? I can be proud of my son for scoring a goal in a game without my personal joy for him coming at anybody else's expense.
I assume he's a righty? In which case, yessir! My lefty, at 16, is still working on making his right a natural part of his game (not having to think when the ball falls to your right ...).
I get being proud, and sure, go ahead and brag. But, looking 12 years into the future (your son is U7 now?)... don't get too hung up on "goals". Yes, it's exciting and an easy metric to watch. At that age, my son was also a scoring machine. Now he's a CB, and has been since U10. Sure, he still gets goals (a couple each season) but his contribution is in stopping the other team. Sure, you can't win if you don't score any goals, but you can't lose if the other team doesn't score any. Enjoy the ride and enjoy watching your child enjoy whatever they do.
Agreed there. Not sure all would agree with me, but for me the fact that he can and is using both feet is a bigger deal and is likely to mean more down the road if he keeps having fun and playing. A lot of kids (most) find their way to something other than goal-scoring forward over the years (mine's a CB, LB, left wing and occasionally other things -- the Swiss Army knife of players, which I'm trying to learn to like).
Yes a righty. His left is still weak, but I'm just proud that he does make attempts with his left and sometimes it works out. Congrats on having a lefty... they seem to have a natural advantage. So many greats are lefties.
It's U8 but some of the kids are so tall I swear they gotta be 9 or 10. And they use goalies, and actual defenders to contend with. More positioning/shape/etc. I try to get my kid to play defense but he really resists it. Hopefully his club coach will rotate the kids around. Agreed, it's hard to win without good defense. I love defense and am a defender myself. I tried to teach my kid proper form from the beginning and it seems that's paying off. For his age his shot is fairly accurate and powerful. I tell him it doesn't matter if you score goals, main thing is to try hard, don't give up, learn, have fun.
No, it's just a mathematical certainty. Most players' careers end in a playdown tournament format, in which all but 1 team loses their last game.
Seeking input - I would like to sign my kid up for another sport (in addition to soccer), either flag football or basketball. But they play games on Saturdays. Currently my kid is playing club soccer and indoor. Indoor is either on Sat or Sun. The club hasn't started games yet but will in a few weeks and I think the games will be on Saturdays, but I don't know what times. I wish some leagues played on weekdays. I don't know if the games will conflict since I don't know the times. Should I just not sign him up for another sport for now? Or just deal with conflicts when they arise (ie, will have to decide which sport to skip if there's a conflict, and is that a big deal?)?
When our kids were younger, our "rule" was only one sport "in season". So if they wanted to play soccer in the fall, they couldn't do fall baseball (same in spring). If there was overlap, that was acceptable. And by overlap, say the last two weeks of the fall soccer season was the start of the winter basketball season. While I do think it's good for kids to try many different sports, I don't think it's fair to coaches or teammates to have split commitments, ESPECIALLY when you get into "club". First, find out how long your fall club season goes (around here the games end around the middle of October for the younger ages). Then find out when the other leagues start. If soccer ends in October and basketball begins in October, there's no conflict. However, indoor and basketball there might be a conflict (indoor here starts around the end of outdoor season). When you find a conflict, you ask your child what would they prefer doing. Missing out on a couple of months of organized games/practices for a sport shouldn't be a big deal at that age. Also find out from your club if they have required winter training for his age group. That could affect your decision. More than likely it's optional, but it would be good to know.
Not that it really matters, but I kinda dig that our team is diverse. There's a handful of hispanic kids, a couple asian kids, a black kid, a white kid.
I'm pretty sure it does but not directly. Kids quit when they aren't getting better. One kid being carried by talented teammates might stick it out until the talented kids age out/move to select/make hs when they dont/etc. Usually though the selection starts even in the rec leagues through friend requests or "we have to carpool with the ronaldos.." and the ronaldos then say "we have to be with the van dijks.." etc. So you get teams of kids that arent' improving, most likely, even in leagues where "we don't keep score at those ages" they can count, they or their parents start to feel/express/internalize they "aren't as good", it's no longer fun, so the next time registration rolls around, they drop the sport.
My kid just finished the indoor season and he was top scorer in the league. Averaged 4 goals/game. Granted it was not a comp league. He is also in an outdoor comp club and scored 3 in his first ever comp game. That league is just getting started, but I doubt he will keep a 3 goal avg in the comp league, I think it will get more challenging. But still, it's fun to see him do well. And he scores maybe 35% of the goals with his left foot. I would be fine if he played more defense and didn't score, but he's got a knack for scoring goals; maybe all those hours of 1v1 helped develop that in him.
Seeking advice - my kid had a game over the weekend. The coach played him about 1/3 of the game. And it's kinda getting to me. We had a few subs. So each kid easily could have played over 50% of the game. This is U8 comp. My kid got the fewest amount of minutes on the team (and ironically scored our only goal). I don't know about you, but at this age level I don't think any kid should be warming the bench for long stretches, and they should all get about equal play time (not expecting perfection here, but approximately). In terms of skill level, he's on par with most of the squad. This is the higher tier squad. But I would rather my kid play on the lower tier if that means getting more minutes. Should I email the coach asking why he played my kid so little? I really want to know why but at the same time I don't want to over-react; I don't want to come off as one of those angry, high-maintenance parents. But I can't tell if I'm over-reacting. But also, if there are particular issues as to why he played my kid the least, shouldn't I be made aware of those? To be clear, I am in no way expecting my kid to get "the most" minutes. But I do expect him to not be played the least. In fact, no kid at age 7 should be significantly under played relative to the rest of the team. Or am I wrong?
Has it only happened once? I'd wait and see if it's a pattern before doing anything. Sometimes coaches just occasionally lose track of their kids' minutes and someone sits for no particular reason.