2002-03-13-9:59 a.m.

Dimitri had soccer practice yesterday. First practice of the year, he looked pretty good. His team is pretty talented and he fits in well. The coach looks pretty good, we'll know more at Thursday's practice what type of drills they do.

Dimitri did a couple memorable things.

First was, the coach was trying to gain a skill assessment for the team. He split them in half, had one team chase the ball back and then bring it up. The other team had to defend. At one point, Dimitri found the ball on his foot, dribbled to the middle, beat the kid in front of him and fired the ball in the goal (fired as in kicked the ball at a reasonable pace, 'fired' sounds more bragging-daddish, so that's my story and I'm sticking to it). It was a good goal, it gave him instant confidence, makes me feel good for him.

Second funny one, the coach asked the players to pick numbers. He asked Dimitri, "What number do you want to be?" Dimitri replied, "How high can I go?" "I guess 99", the coach said with a shrug. To which Dimitri replied, "Ok, I'll be 99."

Umm....the coach looked at me and I looked at him and shrugged and told Dimitri, "Hey, pick a number between 1-16, this isn't hockey, Gretzky." So Dimitri dissapointedly picked the #10. Which is cool with me, his soccer style puts him in the #10 shirt I hope, Pelé is a 10, Maradona is a 10, but now I'm getting ahead of myself....he's not quite Pelé or Maradona yet I suppose.

Anyway, he really enjoyed practice, so I think he's going to have fun this season, which is the really important thing.

d.