Soccer season nearly over

If you're one of the folks around here who has trouble feeling good about where you live, I have a suggestion.

This Saturday morning, between 9 a.m. and noon, head out to the Blytheville Youth Sportsplex. Drive around to the north of the baseball fields, via the appropriately named "Corner Kick Drive," and you will find a wide expanse filled with soccer fields.

This is the home of the Blytheville Area Soccer Association. Every Saturday for the last month and a half, the association has filled up its fields with local soccer players. It's a wonderful sight to behold. You have boys and girls of all ages and races, running around, having fun and getting exercise. There are big fields for the big kids, smaller fields for the smaller kids, and a tiny field for the tiny kids. And with the kids in their bright, shiny uniforms of red, blue, yellow and green, there's not a more sunny, upbeat sight to be found on a Saturday morning in the fall.

This has been my family's second season of playing soccer, and we think the world of the whole program.

As compared to some other youth sports, soccer is a great option for kids. As I've said before, with other sports, there is a whole range of skills that must be mastered in order to play with any level of success. There's throwing, catching, hitting and running, and a fault with any one of them results in a busted play. But in soccer, it's simple. You run and you kick. Anyone can do it.

Better yet, soccer offers kids non-stop action. In t-ball, for instance, kids spend 95 percent of their time waiting. Waiting to bat, waiting to run, waiting for the ball to roll their direction. This is not the case in soccer. In soccer, all players are always in motion. If activity is what you want for your kids, soccer is your sport.

(For that matter, as a parent/spectator, soccer is infinitely more exciting than t-ball. I'd just as soon watch the cotton grow behind my house than watch a t-ball game.)

As mentioned earlier, this was our family's second season of soccer. But new to us this year is that I agreed to serve as a coach. Coaching a youth sport is something every parent ought to do at least once, and with my own limited knowledge of sports like baseball and basketball, soccer seemed like the right niche for me.

I won't claim to be an expert on the sport by any stretch of the imagination; however, my elementary school up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was host to that city's English as a Second Language program, and as such, I attended grade school with dozens of kids who's families had recently emigrated from Vietnam, Cambodia and other countries. And as such, the sport they knew how to play was soccer. And so naturally, my school went soccer-crazy. At recess, we didn't play basketball or football; we played soccer.

So it was those elementary-school memories that I called upon as I became a soccer coach for the first time. I ended up coaching my son's 6-and-under team, which has proven to be quite the experience. I have six kids on my roster; four are kindergartners, and the other two will start school next year.

And though I may joke about our games being barely organized chaos, the truth is I've had a blast. I've loved working with my team, and I don't think you could find a better group of little soccer players anywhere. We called ourselves "The Spiders," and to Drew, Samantha, Aliya, Sierra, Grace and Ty, I say thank you for a great season, and for letting me be your coach.

And for that matter, I need to give props to my daughter's 10-and-under team — "The Bulldogs" — who I enjoyed cheering for all season. They exuded skill, teamwork and sportsmanship that should be a model for every team that plays. Here's to Katie, Alysen, Morgan, Alex, Bella, Haley, Chandler, Jasmine, Karina and coach John Barton.

Saturday will be the last game of the season. I would have thought that I'd be burned out by this point, eager for the games to end. But I'm not. The truth is I can't think of a better way to spend a Saturday than watching kids happily kick a little white ball around a big green field.

So the season will end, but soccer will not. We'll still play in the back yard, and we might even catch a game or two on the television every now and then.

But most of all, we'll look forward to next year, another year playing a fantastic sport.