My parents signed me up for soccer when I was in second grade. It was 1974 and, truth be told, America was still figuring things out. We played eleven on eleven, a giant amoeba of forty flailing legs roaming around the field while two goalies with oversized gloves looked on, bored. Coaches and parents screamed their heads off from the sidelines.”Kick it! Kick it! Kick the ball!” they yelled.
In theory, we played a formation of two fullbacks, three halfbacks and five forwards because that was the only way to eventually phalanx the ball into the other team’s net. It has been said that if a monkey sits at a typewriter typing randomly for long enough, eventually it will write the entire corpus of Shakespeare. Same idea.
I played in sneakers and long, corduroy pants with iron-on knee patches. My horn rimmed glasses were held on by an elastic strap. It was obvious from the start that no one expected very much from me. I was not like my brother, good at every sport he played. I’d be dragged to his baseball games and spend the innings digging holes in the grass with sticks, bored out of my skull. Mostly I remember the incessant taunting of the opposing teams. “Hey batter-batter, hey batter-batter-batter, hey batter-batter, swing!” Not a beautiful game, not like soccer.
My coaches always put me in as one of the wing halfbacks where I could do the least damage. One season, my coach experimented by putting me in goal. That didn’t last long. The first time I punted the ball, it went backwards over the goal posts and the other team got a corner kick off it. Then they scored on me twice in one quarter; which was exactly two goals more than I scored in my entire rec league soccer career.
I was not quite as bad as my best friend, Tommy, who spent his time on the field finding bugs and studying dandelions. As the ball rolled past him time and again, the whole team screamed at him to get his head out of his butt. “Kick it! Kick it!” we yelled.
He never did, but would still get oranges at half time with the rest of us. Tommy and I would eat our quartered slices, put the empty peels in our mouths and smile at each other like apes. That was soccer. Once I cussed about the ref to Tommy and Mom overheard it. She grabbed me by both arms and firmly told me to never talk like that again. Mostly I think she was upset that I knew the F-word, and by that had somehow let me down.
I was always the shortest kid on the team. One year, Mrs. Manson wanted both her boys to play on our team even though one was too young by rec league rules. But the Mansons were used to getting their way, so she called me over at the practice field at Sidwell Friends. In front of the whole team, she made me stand back to back with her son who was two years younger than me but several inches taller. “See!” she screeched triumphantly at the coach. “The refs will never know - they let this shrimp play!”
Things improved somewhat for me the year we lived in Concord, CA. If the United States was behind on soccer culture, Concord was even further behind. We didn’t even get our own uniforms. Each team got mesh reversible shirts that we had to turn back in after every season, yellow on one side and green on the other. So every game on every field was yellow vs. green, green vs. yellow. We looked like a Sprite commercial.
Because California was behind by comparison I found myself incrementally better than I was back East. I was even made center fullback. At the end of the season, the award the coach gave me was “Most Intelligent Player,” and I won’t lie - that felt good. It didn’t hurt my standing that half way through the season, our team had a palace coup of sorts, after which I was elected team captain. Not because I was the best player by any stretch, but simply because I was oblivious to the rival factions that had arisen on the team and were at each other’s throats. I was something like one of those compromise thirty-seventeenth-ballot Pope candidates you read about in the Middle Ages. My white smoke had finally risen.
It was in California that I enjoyed my greatest personal soccer triumph. It was during P.E. class, with two teams of fifth graders playing on a hilly, unmowed field at Wren Avenue Elementary School. I found myself on defense standing in grass, I kid you not, up to my thighs. So I decided to literally lay low and wait. Soon enough, the other team’s best player made a fast break with our goalie out of position. All he could see in front of him was an empty net. That was my moment. I jumped up from the grass like one of Wellington’s Foot Guards at Waterloo, and ran straight at him, hollering. He froze, stunned that the ground suddenly seemed to sprout defenders. I took the ball from him and I kicked it. I kicked that ball.
My joy faded when we returned to Maryland the next year. I joined a couple more teams and lasted a couple more years before I quit. Dad always came to my games and tried to encourage me. Once, during a free kick, I saw an uncovered player and ran around in a crazy circle to get to him in time. It seemed to confuse the player taking the kick and he muffed it. Dad swore to me I won that game. I did not.
I finally quit soccer when my team broke up and I was put on a new team with players I did not know. At the first practice I ran towards the ball during a scrimmage and fell down. My new coach yelled at me, “Awwww! Why’d you fall down? Don’t fall down!” That was my last practice.
Years later, when our two girls started their rec soccer careers, Kirstan and I coached their teams at various levels. She was better at the upper age range. But I was not bad when the girls were young. I taught them to do quick throw-ins before the other team was ready, and to kick the ball away from their own goal towards the sidelines. “Out of the middle! Out of the middle!” I would shout. According to my wife I often mime kicked the ball as I shouted, as if I could change the outcome by sheer force of will. I loved coaching little kids soccer. It was like playing chess but with pieces that moved however they wanted.
But mostly, I taught my players that when they fell down, to get right back up. To not worry about it, just to get right back up and keep playing. I tried to encourage them, win or lose, even the sweet girl who played goalie while holding clovers in both hands, relentlessly cheerful no matter how many shots she let in.
In time, I was astonished at how many goals our girls scored growing up. As one of Taylor’s coaches said of her, she was not the fastest player, but she really, really liked to score. Geneva would become the third highest scorer in Dayspring Christian School history. I went to every game of theirs I could, with too many good memories to recount here. I was the loyal Dad shouting from the sidelines, expressing my occasional opinions about the officiating. “Ref, what was that?! We are perplexed.”
Kirstan organized pick up soccer in the summers, played with friends in the field with the rusty fence behind Food Lion. Sometimes we’d invite others on the field to join us. The international players were always friendly and so good. My friend Daryl broke my rib once because, apparently, no one taught him how to stop running once he hit a certain pace.
On top of all this, year after year, I enjoyed going to Thompson Field to watch the Virginia Tech men’s team play. They are coached by a good friend who has done an excellent job building an elite program. But what makes him a great coach is simple. He really loves those kids. He helps them grow into men. I made a hat out of an old soccer ball, painting it maroon and orange. Every time we scored, I’d put it on a kid’s head and they would run up and down the stands, eliciting cheers. I miss that.
Our girls are both grown and on their own now, making careers in music and art. My soccer days are over. I watch from home, sitting in my chair, yelling at the television during close games. “Kick it! Kick the ball!”
It’s a beautiful game.
I didn’t know that pop up from the grass story. Made me chuckle. Yes I actually LOL’d. This post is wonderful and well expressed.