Soccer
My son has been involved in soccer since he was about four. He started in Colorado, where the games could best be described as a swarm of bees with a soccer ball somewhere in the middle. We always had fun watching the games, and I was always proud to see Harrison out there running around and doing his best. There was no real strategy, and very few of the rules were taken into consideration. Really, there were only three things they adhered to: don’t use your hands, keep the ball in bounds, and you’ve got to get the ball into the goal to score. No goalie kicks, no throw-ins, no position assignments.
Harrison usually spent most of his time running around, looking at how fast his feet were moving. Kelly and I sometimes jokingly called him “Forrest” because he tended to resemble Forrest Gummp as he ran. He was a pretty fast little guy, but he didn’t pay much attention to the game. By the time he noticed the ball had changed direction, he was halfway across the field in the wrong direction.
To be honest, I didn’t mind much. As a boy growing up in Iowa, there were basically three sports that were played: baseball, basketball, and football. Sure, we had some sports like tennis, golf, and track, but those were usually on the periphery. But soccer? When it came to Harrison, I was just glad to see him out doing something.
My exposure to soccer was unique: the man across the street, father to one of my good friends at the time, Tom, happened to be from England. And he liked to play soccer (naturally). Tom (or Tommy, as he was usually called then) and I spent hours trying to score goals against his dad in their back yard. I never really learned any of the intricacies of the game, but I gained some ball-handling skills and built an appreciation for soccer.
I always preferred to play a defensive role when I joined in little soccer scrimages. Goalie was even pretty nice, and I was good at it. I was always one of the bigger kids, not really much of a fast runner, and tended to be less tenacious when it came to going after the ball. But I could stop it. Harrison is so much like me, that I expected him to be similar. Besides that, in the past, Harrison tended to be more passive on the field.
Because the people in charge of children’s soccer at the YMCA are either morons or stay-at-home moms, all of my kids’ games the last couple of years have been on week nights. Since I work nights, I haven’t been able to be at a single game. In Colorado, someone had enough sense to scedule games for the weekend, so I never missed one there. This past weekend we lucked out—Harrison had two games scheduled back-to-back on a Saturday.
I went, not expecting much, because the last game I had attended was almost two years ago when Harrison was five and still pretending to be riding a motorcycle or driving a car as he ran around on the soccer field during a game. Boy, oh boy, have things changed.
This year, the kids play by the rules. The coaches have them play positions. And some of these kids have MAD SKILZ (you heard me). To be fair, the coaches rotate kids to positions so they aren’t stuck doing somthing that they don’t like all the time. However, some kids are obviously suited to certain roles better than others, so they tend to be in certain positions more often.
I came to discover that my son has become known as the speedy one on the team. And speedy he is. So fast, in fact, that he’s often the source of the drives down the field toward the goal. Because of this, he’s usually placed in a forward position. Imagine my amazement and delight. I could not get over watching him out there, admiring his tenacity. It was like there was this whole other Harrison I never knew about, right there on the field doing things I never knew he could do. To top it off, he scored the one and only goal by his team between both games.
One of the more entertaining periods of the game was the quarter where Harrison was asked to play goalie. You could tell this kid was way outside his comfort zone. He just wanted to move. Whenever the action came close, Harrison would start running in place in anticipation, not really knowing what to do with himself. He was like a stabled stallion. He wanted to get out there and go after the ball, not wait for it to come to him.
This is exciting stuff. And I’m relieved to see that he’s not just like me. I doubt he’ll become a world class player, but I hope he sticks with it and does well. As long as he’s interested, we’ll make sure we have the money and the time available. And I’ll be sure to be at every game I can.