The Forgotten Sport Resumes

In my childhood, and in the first part of my own children's childhoods, soccer was the only youth sport of note in the household. Soccer has always been an integral element of the fall frenzy, a seasonal houseguest with a standing invitation.

Then the kids got older, and we found ourselves in a community with many more sporting options. That, and the implication of public shunning if your children do not compete in at least three sports or the course of the year, two of which must be played simultaneously, led us to a multitude of new sporting arenas. Basketball, baseball, volleyball and swimming quickly took over our youth sporting lives. We have all had great fun, made many friends, and experienced many new highs and lows with these sports.

The one constant over the years, though, was soccer. The local program is not as far-reaching as the AYSO of our early years, nor is it as intensely competitive or time-consuming as the local club systems. It provides the essential opportunity, however, for hundreds of kids to stay connected with a game that is as much a part of the lexicon of childhood these days as the Nintendo DS and SpongeBob SquarePants. Personally, there is a comfort to returning to the soccer fields every fall, a settling and resetting of the psyche in line with the new school year.

Sadly, Kelly no longer plays. If AYSO had managed to secure a beachhead in our community, she would. Her last coach – my baseball co-coach – attempted to bring AYSO to town last year to supplement the local organization's program, which essentially ends at eight grade. Although many saw the wisdom of giving our kids access to AYSO's established program, which would give older kids an opportunity to play regular season games as well as in post-season tournaments, the entrenched powers-that-be in the local organization would not hear of it. That may change sometime in the future, but too late to prolong Kelly's career. Instead, she gets to be a (reluctant) spectator like the rest of us at Michael's games.

When Michael's coach first contacted us, we did not recognize any of the names on the e-mail list. In contrast to the other soccer teams he has been on over the last three years, when nearly everyone on his teams was a classmate, all but three of the kids on this year's team go to one of the other elementary schools in town. After the first practice, his reviews were not good. He was not impressed by the skill level or attention span of his teammates. I had to remind him that he was the big fourth-grader now, on the team with a number of third graders. Last year he had the luxury of being a third grader on a team with a couple of dominant fourth-graders; now he has to be the player the others look to.

At the first game this Saturday, things went as expected, unfortunately. Against a team full of Michael's friends, we were down 4-0 by halftime. Michael was playing a center forward position, but hardly had any opportunities to do anything with the ball, as most of the gameplay was in front of our own goal.


Michael facing off against his friend Nick.
To start the second half, we made a couple of small adjustments to the lineup. Within a couple of minutes, one of Michael's teammates got him the ball in the opponent's side of the field. Michael took the breakaway and slotted a strong shot between the goalie and the near post. Thirty seconds later, he did it again. A few minutes later, he had another breakaway opportunity. He put good moves on the two defenders, then scored on a cross-goal shot as the goalie came out to take away any near-post opportunities. In the span of a few minutes, what had seemed to be the harbinger of a very long season became an energetic, fiercely contested game. Our defenders suddenly figured out how to play with energy and the other team lost its swagger. The game was still played mostly on our end of the field, but it became an entertaining game to watch rather than the beat down it had been in the first half. One of the other parents even came over to Michael before the fourth quarter to thank him for making the game fun and interesting again.


On the way to a breakaway goal.
We spend much time shaving seconds off of lap times in the pool, tweaking batting stances and honing free-throw form, but without any fanfare, Michael dropped right back in the soccer with a hat trick in the first game. The team still lost, and has a long way to go to figure out how to play good soccer as a team (including Michael; he is a great finisher, but needs to figure out how to be part of the overall flow of the game). Fortunately, the team also knows that it has at least one solid offensive weapon. With any luck, the goals will still come, but in support of at least a few wins.