Kicks

Soccer started. I'm only assisting coaching this year, which is an easier role for me and all involved really. For one, it's easier on the already contentious relationship I have with Daughter # 1 these days. Her complete rightness about everything (are all third grade girls like this?) doesn't jive so well with my coachiness. And I've sneaked R on the team too, at least for practices, though she's about two years too young. No one notices much because like the Giant Four Year old, she is Giant too.

Today was the first game. Vacation is underway and we did not have enough kids to field a team, so R got to suit up and play for real. These seven girls played their little asses off for 45 minutes, without a break, and there were no complaints and no meltdowns and damn, if we didn't almost win.

My daughters played right forward and right defense. They made some passes to one another that made me teary -- not because their moves were so skillful or great (hardly), but because these were the same two girls who had been nastily competitive all week. In fact, I have never known them to be so unlovable to one another as they have been these last seven days: every opportunity to one-up was taken, every turned back of mine was a chance to stick out a tongue.

But here they were, a soccer ball between them, playing and working together with glances and nods that added up to some seriously decent plays. They were like a tiny secret team on the Team.

And tonight when I got home from dinner with That Man, the babysitter reported how tired (aka good) they were and how they were all (including the boy child) asleep in the same bed together. Like kittens.

God, I love game days.

Soccer Update

She didn’t make a travel team.

I am pretty sure that she didn’t even come close.

When the news came, her little sister was taking the trash out, and so she and I had a moment alone. (Her younger brother is still clueless.) I told her the truth as she was reading the letter; I wanted to give her some heads up. She read it herself – it was a nice, vague kind of way of saying “No.”

Her sister walked in the door, post chore, and that girl of mine said, “I gotta letter about travel soccer.”

Her little sister, her arch enemy, slammed her hands to her ears, and looked right at me:

“I don’t want to hear that she didn’t make it.”

She didn’t, I said.

The little sister shuddered: I saw her whole body shake.

But my oldest? The one who didn't make it? She walked toward her to make it better, to soothe her, her little sister.

I said “better luck next year” because that seemed the only thing to say, and then they giggled and ran off together.

I guess we're over it.

Soccer Mom Seeks Advice

Try-outs for the Under 10 soccer travel teams happen this weekend. I’ll be there to help out -- half out of volunteer guilt and half out of complete interest. How good is good, I wonder? How competitive is competitive?

I’m of the parenting philosophy that disdains the “everyone gets a medal” theory. I have no problem with straight-forward winner/loser competition. Most kids are remarkably resilient and hopefully, getting a part in the play or making the team is not the end all be all but just one of a bunch of things kids do for fun.

(Which I hope includes dodgeball -- kick ass, knock-em-out dodgeball.)

So, anyhoo, my own daughter is desperate to try out. And this is a conundrum.

She is on the younger side of U-10, just barely eight years old and she is a feather-weight to boot. She sometimes still runs like a chicken flapping its wings. She trips a lot. Over nothing. Sometimes she tries to kick a ball and just misses it: I mean, totally misses it. She hassles me every moment of practice -- wants me to be the mom when I am there to be the coach.

On the flip side, she’s pretty fast, knows where to be on the field, understands some of the (dare I say) physics of the game, can be fierce and feisty, and mostly, really, really wants to be good.

But she's not quite yet "travel" team material. (I think.)

I explained the odds of making a team to her (there are four travel teams from our town; what’s up with that? There was ONE when I was a kid) with salt shakers on the kitchen counter: 1 out of 3. Understanding that, knowing that, she still wants to go for it.

So, should I put that kid out there for something she might not be prepared for and catch her when she fails, if she does, which odds are, she will? Should I shake off her desire to try-out with pat little Mommy excuses that she might not buy anyway?

And what’s with all this anxiety I so obviously have (and she doesn’t seem to): am I afraid that I might be the sad one if she doesn’t make it? And what if she does make it: it means dragging my kids in way more directions way too many days (and nights) of the week, and wait, shoudn't I be opposed to that?

The try-outs are putting all my loud mouth “thoughts” (rants?) on raising kids to the test (see MOMiifesto).

To try-out or not to try-out? That is the question.

Your “answers” go below.

Winning

We won our first game today and I am way too happy about that than I should be.

Even though I cheer for the other team at a good goal or a good save, I still wanted mine to win. But those girls, a hodegpdoge of kids, they listened to me, and when I told each one that they had done something good, they believed me. I believed me: they were awesome. I love soccer. I love how I get to be when I teach it.

Soccer is a complicated game built for a player with skills of all kinds: the physical, but the mental mostly. It is a game of precision and control, but also a game that anyone can play. I was once moved to tears by this description by Sean Wilsey of World Cup soccer, which I paraphrase and edit here (and for which I hope not to be sued):

"Soccer's universality is its simplicity—the fact that the game can be played anywhere with anything. Urban children kick the can on concrete and rural kids kick a rag wrapped around a rag wrapped around a rag, barefoot, on dirt. Soccer is something to believe in now, perhaps empty at its core, but not a stand-in for anything else.

What makes the World Cup most beautiful is the world, all of us together. The joy of being one of the billion or more people watching 32 countries abide by 17 rules fills me with the conviction, perhaps ignorant, but like many ignorant convictions, fiercely held, that soccer can unite us all."

What an amazing thing to believe, in our wartime especially, that a game can be bigger than its players or the rules. When I read this again, in sharing it here, I was newly inspired: for soccer (obviously), for the kids that play it all over the world, and also for my own simple desire for peace.

Kick the ball, spread out into the places no one is, find a player to pass to, help each other, defend and offend in equal parts, no one scores a goal alone.

Politics, schmolitics. This is what it means to be a soccer mom.