Football for girls

Sometime last year, before we moved, Susanna decided that dance class was "too much exercise" and that she would rather do soccer.  So I figured she could start that this autumn.  In Lancaster it seemed that a lot of girls played soccer, and Susanna would have been excited to join them.

Where we live now, football doesn't seem to be so popular with the girls.  There are so many options for activities, including dance, music, theatre, etc, and football just seems to be more of a boy thing.  Now there is usually a girl in Ben's football class (sometimes different ones on different weeks, but usually just one per class), and there are football clubs with girls groups.  But Ben's football school only goes up to five years (once you're five you're too old) and the football clubs start at age six.  So if you are five-years-old, what do you do?

One local football club offers after school lessons at Susanna's school, and lucky for her, it works with her schedule and one of her good friends wanted to play too.  Today was the first day.  There were 12 kids total (they said they'd take up to 60), and I think seven of them were from Year 1 (Susanna's class), and of those seven, 5 were girls.  Perfect!  

It goes for an hour right after school, but I still have to collect her from her class and get her changed before they start.  Then I have about an hour to do something with Ben (just like when she has Rainbows on Tuesdays...)  Home is too far to be worthwhile, but there really isn't anywhere else to just hang out, except Costa...  Today we went to a nearby playground with a few other younger siblings and the hour passed quickly enough.  As it gets colder (and darker) in the coming weeks, I think we'll have to find somewhere better to wait.

Susanna seemed to enjoy the class today.  She said there wasn't too much running; they mostly played little games.  There won't be any games or real competition.  Its more about learning some football skills.  I'm happy that she is finally getting to opportunity to try this sport.  We'll see where it leads...