Our Little Athlete

This was the summer of sports for Jack. With Schaeffer and Logan being too young to participate yet, we let Jack try a bunch of sports to see if maybe one or two would emerge as a favorite. As it turns out Jack just loves playing, being with friends and running around (shocking, I know). He's content to do those things via whatever sport is going that day. Early in the summer Jack did a two week, individual skills basketball camp. The high school coach and team run the camp and I thought they did an excellent job. I love that they focused much more on character building than skills. Despite making only one basket in two weeks, Jack had a really great time learning a little about dribbling, shooting and defending. I loved it when he would excitedly tell me how some of his shots didn't go in, but "they hit the net, Mom!". He was thrilled that two of his preschool buddies were there with him and as is usual he made fast friends of the coaches and other kids.

Jack also participated in his final year of the park distric T-Ball/Soccer program. I would have personally prefered to sign him up for MYBA t-ball but I dropped the ball and missed sign ups by a long shot. I know Jack didn't even know the difference. I think one of the funniest things about Jack was on t-ball day. When it was his turn to hit he would step up to the plate, pound home plate with his bat a few times, hit the ball and then carefully set his bat down and gently remove his helmet and set it on the ground before he would take off running. The helmet was just too cumbersome for him to run in.

Jack got to try one other new sport this year (besides basketball). We signed him up for tennis class which he was super excited about. He had a great time with that as they worked on learning forehand and backhand skills.

Grandma and Papa Friend took us for ice cream after Jack's final tennis. Since all of his sports are wrapped up for now, I asked him what his favorite was, what he enjoyed the most. He instantly replied all of them but then gave it some more thought and said basketball and tennis. When I asked him if that was because he got to play those sports with friends he grinned and said yes. So that's my Jack, loves to play, no matter the game and especially with friends.