And The Soccer Begins

Practice for our two younger teams has begun in earnest. Much, methinks, to the chagrin of our coach Johnny. The kids have known fo quite some time that league play begins in March and between Johnny and myself we had decided we would begin practicing in the first week of February. The players had other plans though and at the beginning of last week they began showing up at Johnny's door in droves begging him to commence training. He reluctantly agreed and so we are off. It's fun to watch the way he organizes nearly 50 children into groups and is able to work with them over the course of 2 & 1/2 hours. It's no easy task, there are about 10-15 tiny children that aren't even eligible for Kindergarten let alone the 9-12 team, that show up to practice religously in the desire to be a part of the team, and Johnny works with them. The older kids from the two older teams have begun showing up too because their coach Leo only began practices yesterday...and Johnny worked with them too. Life is chaos, random and free like the wind here in Los Laureles and to see something so organized, so intricate and running so perfectly strikes me as incongruous and out-of-place; yet it puts a huge smile on my face. I feel like we're at the beginning of something huge and successful.

johnny ringed my about 30 kids and holding their attention perfectly

a dash for the ball

but without touching it

don't ask me the purpose of this drill

don't know what to say here

i like duke's hat?

i got distracted by this

he's riding towards treacherous terrain

duke and cristian running laps

late for practice

ok, so then i took notice of this

remember this used to be a green pace that they filled in with a mountain of garbage

it used to be level with the current field

they're supposed to me making it into a huge soccer field

when it will happen i'm not sure

that's open garbage there below that came uncovered during the recent rainstorms

so after all that i turned my camera around and saw lauro

he just cut his hair and didn't want to be seen

why he chose to cover his head with his shirt and traipse around the community like a fool instead of hidding under his bed is beyond me

and there was juan carlos who has become bff's with little keiser

neither juan nor lauro have any interest in playing soccer this year

they're so in tune

i turned back around then and decided to get all sorts of artsy

close up shot of a fence post/all blury in the background

artsy in a communist/workers unite sort of way

marvin...not at all artsy

lauro decides to show his face