Jack continued on his same baseball team for the summer, The Benchwarmers. They are mostly boys from his soccer team, so he has a lot of fun. This year they played machine pitch, which Jack really enjoyed.
For the fall, Jack was asked to join a different baseball team with his buddy Louis, whose dad is the coach. The Benchwarmers were not playing in the fall, so we went for it. The Wolverines are a U9 team, so Jack was the only 1st grader. Most of his teammates are in 2nd grade, with a few young 3rd graders. This was the first time for all the boys playing kid pitch. It went fairly well, considering. The games were a little slow, but the boys did pretty well. Jack struggled a little with the kid pitch and didn't get a lot of hits, but he kept his head up and never gave up.
Every kid who wanted to got a chance to pitch. Jack had a few turns, and did pretty well. He wasn't a superstar, but given he had very little practice, we were so proud of him!
And a few videos:
Charlie played on his first baseball team this fall too. He and his buddy Brooks signed up. They ended up on a U6 team but there weren't enough teams to complete a league, so they played against some U7 teams. That meant Charlie's team had machine pitch for 5 pitches and if they didn't hit it, they got to hit off a tee while the other teams would strike out if they didn't hit it.
Charlie LOVED it! He hit really great off the tee, but didn't make a lot of contact with pitches from the machine.
The highlight by far, though, was watching this guy catch. When most kids his age catch, the ball goes right past them as they make very little effort. Charlie, however, caught nearly every pitch that came to him. It was so fun to watch!
Both boys also played soccer in the fall. Jack's team was at a bit of a crossroads because their coach's son didn't want to play soccer anymore. We decided to shop around for a club team that would take all 7 of our boys for the same team, and ended up going with Missouri Rush. We had a very busy fall, and the boys didn't win a ton of games, but we can tell that Jack's skills are improving a lot. It is so fun to watch his team get more and more competitive.
I can't seem to find many pictures of them in action, but here are few of Jack with his soccer buddies. We had one tournament across the bridge in Illinois and since the first game on Saturday was at 8:00 am, several of the families decided to get hotel rooms Friday night. We had so much fun!
Charlie played for the same soccer team he played for in the spring, The Bulldogs. He has a lot of fun with this team and this fall their team wore orange, which was fun with his baseball team being orange too!
I would be remiss if I didn't mention what a trooper Nora was through all of these sporting events. This chick just went with the flow all fall. We had a lot of hot games and plenty of late games and she was so great for all of it. Next year may not be so easy...
Both of the boys played in SCCYSA (St. Charles County Youth Soccer Association) again this spring. It is very convenient having them in the same league and playing at the same complex, and there were only a couple weekends where they had overlapping games.
Charlie joined a new team this year. We liked his coach last fall, but we weren't a fan of a couple boys on the team, so we decided to sign up with a new (random) coach. He still played with his buddy Brooks, but the other four kids on the team were new to us. We really loved his coach (Coach Mitch) and he had a great time.
Charlie's biggest fans
Jack and Lily watching Charlie play
And here are some videos of Charlie in action:
Jack continued to play with the same team he's been with for the last couple of years. They had a great season and were undefeated once again. These boys are really improving and are even starting to pass to each other. They are so fun to watch!
Jack's biggest fan took a little snooze at one day
