Laser Sharks

Up until now, all of Joshua's outdoor soccer seasons have been through Johnson County Parks and Rec.  For this fall, though, we moved Joshua to the Olathe Rush soccer club.  He'd not eligible to play in the competitive league until next fall (we're not sure yet if we want to do that anyway), but this year is recreational only at this age.  But if we stay with it, I think we'd want to do it through Olathe Rush, so we're at least going to get him in their rec league to start.  It's mostly the same, but the main difference is that there are only three players on the field at a time, per team, and the coaches cannot be on the field.  Although that could also be a function of the age difference, because he also moved up in age.  Also, the games are at Lone Elm Park instead of Stoll Park.  It's about the same distance from our house, but in a completely different.  But the problem is when the girls have a game at Stoll Park (they are still in the JCPRD program) and Joshua has a game right after that at Lone Elm.  That makes it hard to go from one to the other, but we've worked around it.

Coach Ryan is the head coach, and I'm the assistant coach.  The team collectively decided to be the Laser Sharks, which is about the coolest youth team sports name I've ever heard.  They always wear their green jerseys, and one of the parents suggested they put their names on the back, which was a good idea.  The other nice thing is the team is almost exclusively from Joshua's kindergarten, so he already knows some of the kids.  Nolan and Thomas are in his class, and Josh, Carson, and Beau are from other kindergarten classes.  Only Sully is from a different school.

Joshua had a really good season.  He didn't score as much as he did in the last season or two, but I think that was largely a function of having more skilled teammates than he's had in the past.  Beau, in particular, is really good.  Joshua doesn't seem to try as hard as he did in past seasons, which could be due to a number of factors.  But when he does, he's probably the second or third best player on the team, and probably the fastest.  He still struggles with trying to be too silly, but we're also still trying to get his medication situation figured out too, so I'm sure that's affecting it as well.  But overall, he's done well, scoring several goals, and being an integral part of the team's success.  And he's still really enjoying it, so I'm sure we'll play it again in the spring.