Soccer Balls

When we lived in Clayton County my older son Justin, maybe six years old at the time signed up to play recreational league soccer.  Or maybe I should say when we lived in Clayton County my thirty-something wife Cindy signed Justin up to play recreational league soccer.  I watched from the sidelines the first year as Justin played in the middle of the field (don’t ask me the name of his position; I didn’t care or know back then and nothing’s changed since).  From what I could tell Justin’s job was to make sure he never interfered with the soccer ball while it was in motion and to let his mom know if there were any butterflies on the field.  Being the proud dad that I am, I noticed he handled both responsibilities extremely well.    

But throughout the entire season Justin never laid a hand, or should I say a foot on the ball.  You see, there were a few times when he actually did lay a hand on the ball, and each time he was called for some lame penalty.  Apparently it’s against the rules to touch a soccer ball with your hands in soccer.  Who knew?  That is, of course unless you’re the kid who can’t run very fast and has to play in front of the net, then you’re allowed to touch it with your hands.  Stupid European game that will never take the place of football in the United States in a million zillion years.   

After the season I took Justin to the local playground so he could practice not touching the soccer ball with his hands.  During that afternoon Justin even kicked the ball a time or two—with his foot and I noticed he could kick the ball a country kilometer (soccer is a European sport, no?).  I thought to myself what an asset he would be to a team if he played in the backfield near the fat kid by the net and kicked the ball all the way to the other side of the field by the other team’s fat kid in front of their net.  Sheer genius!

But now the big question was: How do I pull this off?

The simple answer was: Become the coach of the team!

Where do I sign up?  Before I could say ‘Cambridge University’ (soccer has its roots in Cambridge; look it up) I was deputized as the coach of a team with a name I can’t remember except for the fact that it didn’t rhyme with anything, making it difficult to come up with a catchy team cheer (Aristocrats?  Ambassadors?  Some name starting with an ‘A.’  Maybe two ‘A’s.’  Aardvarks?).  Anyway, practices were a lot of fun because all we did was scrimmage.  And when I say ‘we’ I truly meant ‘we’ because I enjoyed the hell out of running up and down the field with a bunch of rowdy seven and eight-year olds in the cool autumn air, occasionally stopping to admire another one of Justin’s country-kilometer kicks from one end of the field to the other. 

We had quite a season that year and ended up with a perfect record of 12 – 0.  Twelve losses and zero wins.  But we had a blast and when I say ‘we’ I mean the same ‘we’ that scrimmaged two afternoons a week while the incredibly supportive team parents stood on the sideline offering me all kinds of free advice to use in the upcoming game.  I feel bad I never actually used any of their suggestions but it wasn’t entirely my fault:

Most of the time I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about.