Route 75: Soccer Coach

Very special thanks to Jedijawa for taking the pictures. You the man!

That's right. I'm a soccer coach. Of course, you can keep in mind my paltry little school (before I graduated in 1995, at least) never had anything resembling a soccer team. We played football, basketball, and baseball. But I digress....

Anyways, this past Saturday was our first game. Do I expect much? Absolutely not. The kids I'm "coaching" are three years old (my oldest son included), and I want them to simply go out there and have fun. Here's a picture of the field:



So, I meet with the opposing team's coach prior to starting. I say "I'd like to keep the goals the same, and not switch at halftime. No need to confuse three year olds."

"Uh, well, yeah, that's fine," she says to me.

"I mean," I go on to say, "we can switch if you want, I just want everybody to have a good time."

She nods, "Yeah."

So, I go back to talk with my kids, all of them barely higher than my kneecaps. I feel pretty good about the game, and I hope our kids will have a good time.



Usually when I feel pretty good the rug is pulled out from underneath me. Before I go any further, the answer is a resounding YES. I do understand these are three year olds. Unfortunately, other people aren't as perceptive as I am. The kids we played gave body checks, and two of our little girls fell several times. Every time our kids dribbled the ball one boy would use his arms to push our kids out of the way. Now, this isn't really what bothered me so much. What bothered me were the shouts coming from the other side.

One parent: "Get in their face and stop them!"

Another parent: "Take it away from them!"

One parent helping on the field, however, took the cake. Her daughter said she had to go to the bathroom. The mother replied, "You're not going to the bathroom now. You will hold it." Another time her daughter missed kicking a goal. The mother berated her in front of everyone. "If you had been paying attention to what you were doing, you would've scored." I didn't say anything, though I really wanted to. I also didn't say anything about how their kids kicked the ball out of bounds consistently (something our kids didn't do) and how their kids kept picking the ball up and putting it in front of the goal so they could conveniently kick it in. Again, I thought we were playing for the fun of it, so I didn't say anything.

To beat it all, they had a girl on their team that looked like she was six years old. Most three year olds barely make it past the middle part of your upper leg. This girl was almost up to my chest. This girl ran around the field and pushed several of my kids over. I really wanted to jerk a knot in her (and her parents') ass, but I held my tongue. Supposed to be for fun, right? Check out how this girl on the left towers over my kid:



Now I know why youth sports can be anxiety-provoking. After the "game" was over and our kids' shook hands, I got the parents together and told them we were going to work on defense at practice this week. As we were leaving, I noticed the other team sitting around their coach in a circle while she went over what they did wrong during the game. Some people just don't get it, I guess.