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I take solace that in this soccer game today, my boys haven’t scored on themselves. That is not to say that we haven’t helped the other team in this nine to one route they are laying on us. We have helped them plenty by getting out of the way. This may be a great quality to have when someone is moving a mattress. But as a goalie, this presents problems. This should be expected though because I am the worlds worst soccer coach. Honestly, I’m awful.
My own ten-year-old boy is out there giving it everything that he has. He’s lanky and all feet. My boy plays defender and I can see the mist from his rapid breaths. A kid cuts to the right. My son tracks him down. He’s not fast enough to cut him off, but I love the effort. I scream encouraging things from my coaching position on the sidelines.
“Get the ball! Go get the ball!” I scream. That’s some A-plus coaching right there.
This is the part of the story where I tell you that it hasn’t always been this way. That I was awesome when I first started coaching this team when all the boys were four. Nope, I was pretty terrible then too. It was less about soccer then, though. Coaching was more about teaching the kids not to pick up the ball. I nailed that coaching advice. “Don’t use your hands!” I would say from the sideline. Then they would usually pick up the ball and throw it at a parent in the crowd.
The kid my son was tracking scores and I see my son’s shoulder’s fall. The route is officially on and my boy is taking it hard. I wish there was something I could do to make it easier for him. No one likes getting walloped in front of spectators. If I was a better coach, perhaps I could have come up with some sage advice that would help them actually improve But all my advice is cliche and based on Air Bud movies. When the boys were five, I came up with what I called the airplane rule. The boys would always stop practicing when an airplane was overhead. As we live next to a military base, this happened a lot. So rather than fighting the inevitable, I rolled with it. Practice stops anytime an airplane is overhead. I didn’t mean for this to take effect during games, of course. There is a good chance that I didn’t think it through enough the first time it happened. I had to explain to the opposing coach what the rule was and luckily he adopted it too.
I search the sky at today’s game hoping to see an airplane. Fluffy white clouds fly across the deep blue midwestern sky. There are no planes to blame this beating on. Our team does the kickoff, and I talk to some of my assistant coaches while the other team quickly steals the ball. We are going to make some substitutions soon My son is going to puke. There is that bit of pride in me that swells up when I see him not quitting even though the opposing team is once again racing right for him. He needs a break, and my assistants get the next group of boys ready. There’s a kid that I want to try at the left midfielder. He’s new to soccer this year, but I think it’s important to give him a shot at every position.
I didn’t decide this in any coaching epiphany that I had. In fact, this has never come up at all in any coaching training that I’ve had. I’ve taken several classes to improve myself over the last six years. The classes talked about forwards and strikers; formations that sounded like they needed military precision to pull off. The classes never talked about playtime. But this is my soccer team. Everyone gets playtime. Before I send our new kid in, I pull him aside and try to give him the best coaching advice that I can.
“If you don’t know what to do, just kick the ball and have fun.” Yup. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.
We get scored on again within seconds. I look over to the parents on the sideline. This is the true strength of our team. Our snack schedule is on point. Oranges and juice boxes come out without fail at the end of every game. And no one yells at me, although I think they would be justified if they did. I am, after all, a terrible coach. We win about as much as the Bad News Bears did but our story doesn’t end with a great comeback. Ours ends with snacks. The parents are great and after each season they ask me if I’m coming back the next year. Am I willing to keep the team together?
It’s an odd question. We had a couple of good seasons, once where I had a kid that just took off on his own most times. We won a second place medal that year. But most years, like the current one, we stare at double-digit losses. But I keep getting the question, are you coming back next year? Are you keeping the team together? I wonder if they’ve been watching the same games I have? The kids seem to take the losses in stride. At the end-of-season parties, they are all smiles and laughs. Any new kids that I get seem to fit right in with the kids that have been with me for six years. They don’t talk about the losses. They do talk about that time that I fell over the bench while giving great coaching advice like “We need to score more than the other team, boys. It’s that simple.” I’m a soccer Plato on those sidelines.
So I keep coming back. I don’t want to break the team up. After each season, I see the boys and how they’ve grown. Both as young men and as soccer players. We actually kick the ball now. My single greatest accomplishment as a soccer coach is that I show up. Season after season, year after year. I’m a fixture on those sidelines and every year the league asks if we know anyone to coach a new team because we are running low on coaches. Not my team though. I’m there.
Thankfully, the final whistle blows at today’s soccer game. My son runs over to me with a smile and gives me a hug. Some other boys do as well. We follow that up with high-fives because that’s what my coaching self says follows hugs. No one is complaining as we shake hands on the bad side of a twelve point loss. Snacks come out, and the boys rush to them. I chat with the parents, telling them things that we are going to work on next week. Things like getting in front of the ball so that the opposing team has at least go around something before they score.
The boys, my boys, sit cross-legged joking with one another They are ten so I have to pretend I don’t hear the ball jokes they tell each other that have nothing to do with soccer balls. My son laughs with one of his best friends, and the new kid looks happy with an orange stuck in his mouth. Some of the boys start rehashing their greatest moments today, complete with superhero sound effects you would see in a Batman show from the 1960s.
Yes, I am a terrible soccer coach. But looking at my boys I know something else.
I am the world’s GREATEST terrible soccer coach.
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