CRUNCH TIME FOR SOCCER. <i> World Cup gives sport its best chance for national prominence</i> : Why One Fan Won’t Go : Dad Loves Soccer, but Only if His Kids Are Playing
My knees wobbled as I stepped into the batter’s box and swung the bat back and forth in a surely unsuccessful attempt to appear calm. The bases were loaded with two outs in the last inning and my Little League team, the Tigers, was trailing by a run. I was a puny 11-year-old, and the kid on the mound must have been in his mid-20s. In any case, he needed a shave.
It was one of those rare Saturdays when my father didn’t have to work, and I could hear him clapping and yelling encouragement. “Just a bingle, son!” He still sometimes says that to an Angel or Dodger on TV when a single is all the home team needs.
But every baseball player knows the danger inherent in hitting the ball. Outs lurk everywhere. So I was praying for a walk. And I struck out looking.
My dad said all the right things, and I don’t remember any of my teammates accusing me of letting the team down, but those moments remain in my mind like the climactic scene from a horror movie. Actually, I was a decent player in Little League, but all the hits, the diving catches, the stolen bases have faded, and the memory of that afternoon lingers.
And that’s why I love soccer.
I have two daughters, Jaime, 13, and Niki, 9, and both have played AYSO soccer since they were 5. Sure, somebody wins and somebody loses, but the agony of defeat seldom rests solely in the mind of one youngster. Maybe I’m just a 44-year-old hippie, but I wanted my kids to experience the joy of participation and the exhilaration of victory without risking the heartache of feeling the sole responsibility for defeat.
Soccer is just plain positive. In baseball, you yell, “Get a hit, this pitcher’s got a rubber arm.” I’ve never heard a soccer parent scream, “Let’s score, this goalie’s as slow as molasses.”
And if ever there was a sport where you win and lose as a team, it’s youth soccer. I’ve seen teams with a couple of the league’s best players have losing seasons. Teamwork almost always prevails in the playoffs. Double-team a “star,” and the team’s other players--who haven’t had to handle much of the ball handling or scoring all season--usually aren’t up to the task.
Jaime’s lack of foot speed has kept her from being an All-Star, but her tenacity and mastery of fundamentals have made her a valuable member of every team. Niki is swifter and more elusive and scores goals, but she doesn’t get carried off the field on her teammates’ shoulders. The point being that youth soccer is a sport with a niche for almost everyone and, just as important, it’s not failure-oriented, like baseball, where all eyes focus on the batter and even the best succeed only one-third of the time.
The 5-year-olds are the most fun. It’s “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids Down to Micro-Organisms.” They look like an amoeba. The ball is the nucleus and two dozen tiny legs flail away as the whole mass oozes around the playing surface. It’s a rugby scrum in super slow-motion.
A goal is always a thing of wonder and delight, with a momentary hero and never a goat.
Even at the upper-division levels, when the play is intense and strategic, seldom is one person on the spot. Goalies are under scrutiny, to be sure, but everyone realizes they’re at the mercy of the defense. It’s almost always a case of either “Great save!” or “There was nothing you could do to stop that one.”
Two years ago, Jaime’s team was losing by a goal in the closing minutes of a playoff game. Her team was on the offensive and she was playing fullback, near midfield. The ball bounded in her direction. Hoping to keep her team on offense, she tried to pass the ball back in front of the goal, but got a little under it, sending a long, high shot that slipped over the goalie’s hands into the top corner of the net.
It was her first goal in three seasons, but that just made it that much sweeter. Her teammates piled on her. The celebration was short--her team lost in overtime--but I’ll never forget the smile that split her face when she ran to the sideline and panted, “Dad, did you see that ?”
Those are the kinds of memories I want my kids to hold from their adventures in organized youth sports. And those are the kinds of experiences soccer fosters.
While I have become well-acquainted with the rules and strategies of soccer during the last eight years, that doesn’t mean my weekends will include the Salsa, unless you’re talking chips and margaritas, too. Maybe someday Jaime and Niki will take their kids to watch soccer, I don’t know, but today’s pro soccer entrepreneurs are at least a generation ahead of their time.
I’ve seen enough soccer--from little pups to World Cup--to come to the conclusion that it’s not an overly appealing spectator sport . . . unless your kid is playing.
