Assistant Coach (Soccer); Common App / Work experience

I need some help editing this short response for the common app and I have a lot of questions regarding the essay.

1. Is the entire essay a bit off topic and should I focus more on what I did as a volunteer than on how the experience affected me?

2. I am 90 characters over limit. What can I remove?
3. Should I write about one of my flaws or only focus on good traits?

Prompt: Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences in the space below (1000 character maximum)

In the summers before my junior and senior years, I volunteered as a coach's assistant at the Rancocas Valley Jr. Soccer Academy. At first, I viewed the task of waking up at seven every Sunday morning and going to the local soccer fields as worth nothing more than the community service hours and the satisfaction experienced from helping others. It never occurred to me that I could learn so much from children no older than ten.

Although society commonly relates wisdom with age, there is a lot we can learn from children. They often have little knowledge of the world, but in some ways this is their most precious characteristic. Growing up significantly develops our views, however, there are some basic and healthy values lost with time.

Obligations, expectations, and responsibilities are life's way of forcing us to grow up. We often attempt to convey our wisdom upon kids as if we are all their teachers; yet, kids are the ones most capable of teaching us life lessons. Working with kids revealed to me my greatest flaw of focusing on the bad, instead of simply enjoying the good.

worth nothing more than the community service hours and the satisfaction experienced from helping others. When I first read this part, the two things seem to contradict one another. I think you can cut out the part about satisfaction from helping others for a great contrast leading into your next sentence.

1) The beginning of your essay is good, but then you get a bit off track. It seems like you're only using your volunteer experience as an opening to talk about learning from kids. While you should be analyzing how volunteering has benefited you, you should also be talking about the volunteer service. Maybe you could talk about one particular instance in which one of the kids taught you something new.

2) I would rework the last two paragraphs and try to spend a little more time talking about the volunteer experience.
3) Writing about a flaw is fine, but make sure you end the essay with something positive like how you've learned from this flaw.

Good luck on your common app :)