Goooooal

K-bao has wrapped up another soccer season with the Roar. The season was generally quite successful, as measured by both K-bao's personal growth and the team's success.

Indeed, after some ups and downs over prior years, K-bao has grown in her own love for the sport, and genuinely looked forward to the weekly practices as well as the Saturday games.

Some of this was undoubtedly the social aspect; a number of her best friends are on the same squad. But the K-folks also noticed that she also started to enjoy the game more after devouring a series called The Kicks, written by US Olympic gold medalist Alex Morgan. The series includes six books that chronicle a number of middle school girls' soccer adventures, including some uplifting messages about self-empowerment and team spirit.

While K-Pop and K-Mum's primary agenda for K-bao's soccer is for her to have an activity to work out her overabundance of energy -- learning a few lessons about working in a team, winning and losing and dealing with adversity are some nice side benefits too.

K-Pop managed to capture a couple of the goals she scored over the course of the season:

Hat Trick+

Let the record show that in league play yesterday young K-bao scored not one, not two, not three, but five goals for her soccer team the Lions. Almost a double hat trick.

Interestingly, on the car before the game, while we were still waiting for various family members to join us, K-bao had initiated the following dialogue with K-Pop:

• "Daddy, would you be upset if I didn't score today?" Of course not!
• "Well, would you be upset if I didn't try my best?" Well, I would probably be disappointed.
• "What if I scored a million goals but didn't try my best?" I still wouldn't like that.
• "Well, what if I tried my best but didn't score at all?" I would be very proud of you.
• "But you'd be the happiest if I tried my best and scored like 5 goals right?" Yes I suppose. But don't focus on the number of goals you're going to score.

Well, lo and behold, K-bao settled on the best outcome. And delivered exactly that number. 

Here is in fact the fifth goal (which was more of a tap-in on a rebound, after a fantastic charge downfield and an excellent first shot on goal...K-Pop wasn't fast enough with his camera on the other ones). 

Game On

Let the record show that, after a single weekend of practice with pop-up PUGG soccer nets (acquired at what is undoubtedly an 85% gross margin from the Sports Basement), little K-bao scored four goals in her weekend soccer match.

K-Pop was volunteer coaching / refereeing the game and so couldn't go overboard with enthusiasm, but nonetheless thought it appropriate to throw his arms up and and bellow "GOOOOOOAL" each time the ball hit the back of the net.

Here K-bao puts on her game face before the match:

"I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee"