Siena played soccer this fall, her second season in an “organized” league. She wasn’t the oldest on her team (another girl was one day older), but she was the tallest. All of the other kids on her team were playing their first season, so Siena had an early advantage in the games, and she scored quite a bit the first few weeks. But eventually the other kids figured out what was going on, and Siena’s lack of competitive spirit offset her physical advantages, so in the end she was pretty middle-of-the-pack in terms of soccer performance. But she enjoyed it nonetheless.

I did manage to get a few pictures during one of the colder games of her going after the ball and taking a shot on goal:

The main problem Siena has with soccer is that she seems to think that if someone else has the ball, then it’s their turn to have the ball and it wouldn’t be nice of her to take it away. I told her many times that if that “someone else” is on the other team, it’s never their turn to have the ball and she needs to be not nice for a change. But she’s just such a sweet, considerate girl that this is a very hard concept for her. We think that she’ll be better suited to sports where she’s competing a little less directly with opponents, like golf, marathoning, archery, or javelin throw — sports where one acts individually and is then compared to other contestants.