Last year, on the first day of fourth grade, Edie’s teacher went around the room and asked each child to use one word to describe themselves.  Edie’s word?  “Awesome”.

Come the parent teacher conference the first week in November and Edie’s teacher was in full agreement with her.  It became sort of a running theme in school last year, with one of her friends, who had to write about her in an assignment, wrote, “The reason Edie tells people she’s awesome is because she only tells people what they what they really need to know.”

Edie played soccer for the same coach for 5 seasons – from the time she moved up to U-10 in second grade until this past spring.  Coach Bill isn’t coaching U-12 this season, so we had to find a new team, which meant a new coach.  While she’s on a team with her school friends for the first time ever, her new coaches don’t know that she prefers to play defense, they are all about following the league rules and having all the girls play all the positions.  Which means everyone gets at a turn at goalie. 

She’s never played goalie.  Last season when asked, she told Coach Bill she wasn’t playing goalie because she could break a nail.

Seriously.  Instead, she played defense and probably saved more goals than the girl who played goalie that day, only because she couldn’t use her hands, her nails were safe.

These are the things that truly matter to my girl.

Saturday morning as we were setting up by the sidelines, we noticed Edie wearing a goalie shirt.  “Did she know she was playing goalie?” “I don’t know, she didn’t mention it.” 

Turns out, she didn’t know until about 2 minutes before the game started.  So, with absolutely no experience, no practice and no warning, she stepped into the goal box. 

Of course the ball immediately came her way.  And stayed down there most of the half.  Pat counted 5 saves within the first 5 minutes of the game.  The team they played were fast, tall and good.  No way could you tell she’d not ever played that position before.  She had 10 saves in all the first half, giving up just one to a girl who was just so determined to score a goal you could see it on her face as she charged up the field over and over.

I am so proud of my girl, who just stepped in and DID it.  Sure, she has her moments of serious not-quite-11-year-old girl attitude, some of her limit pushing these days has us at our limits trying to figure out how to deal with it,  she even has her moments of self doubt, but she also has this wonderful ability to pick things up and just run with it, fearlessly, and kick ass at it.   She really does tell you all you need to know when she describes herself as awesome. I may be slightly biased, but I couldn’t agree more.