Quote Originally Posted by niccig View Post
DS has a medical condition with nerve pain. After a rough first year of being diagnosed, he’s been functional with daily life for the last 2 years including playing AYSO soccer, which he’s loved since under 5 division. He’s now in U19, everyone is size of a grown man and the play is rougher (lots of yellow cards handed out this season) and the refs don’t call every foul - volunteer refs, they don’t see everything and some are better than others. DS has been getting upset with the referring and today it came out why - if he gets hurt, he’ll have months of flare-ups and be back in the hospital. He doesn’t want to play anymore. We talked about other options to stay involved, other rec leagues etc but the reality is he may need to stop playing as it’s a contact sport, and change sports to something that doesn’t have contact. I’m upset as he’s loved playing since he was 4, but his time with it may be over.


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Oh, I'm so sorry for him. Moving on from it must be so hard.

Soccer does indeed get incredibly physical as time goes on. It got to the point where I honestly hated watching some of the games and my kids never made it as high as U19 (nor were they in the uber-competitive levels). It's just a reality of the sport. Some teams were renowned for their ability to "play dirty" and not draw attention from the refs, it was at times appalling.

Maybe he would enjoy refing, but I think I'd see if he'd like to get involved with coaching whatever his favorite age group is. A co-worker did it on the side and found it incredibly rewarding, and it was a paid position for a competitive team so he earned some cash too!