Soccer’s a Ball, With a Gaggle of Giggles

They look at me like I’m a blind date who didn’t quite work out, gazing up in the August sun and sort of blinking and tilting their little heads, wondering why, exactly, we’re all here.

“So, how am I doing so far?” I ask, which is a little joke because this is the very first minute of the very first soccer practice of the year.

I get no response. Nothing.

“Thanks for the encouragement,” I say, looking back at the clipboard.

The little girls sit in a half circle in the grass, with their shiny new soccer balls and their stiff new soccer shoes, looking up at me as if waiting to be fed.

They yawn. They rub their eyes. They pull stuff off their tongues. They fidget. They fadget. In the back row, one girl is counting her teeth.

“Are you our coach?” one finally asks.

“Yes, I’m your coach,” I say.

“I need to talk to my mother,” she says, scampering off toward the bleachers.

Another girl complains of a stomachache. Then another one. Apparently these stomachaches are really going around because three or four of them now have stomachaches. And frankly I’m not feeling so hot myself.

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t look too good,” the little red-haired girl says.

“Thanks,” I say.

“You’re welcome,” she says.

And they all giggle. It doesn’t take much to make a young soccer team giggle. Usually what happens is that somebody on the team says something not particularly funny, which immediately triggers a round of laughter.

In this case, the little girls giggle, then look at one another to make sure everyone else is giggling, like some choir where everyone has to giggle in unison or you’re out.

“OK, everybody, stand up,” I say, triggering an extra-long round of giggles.

Summer had been going so well. Baseball ended. Softball ended. Eighty pounds of bats and balls got moved from the trunk to the garage.

And in that sliver of time between baseball and soccer, we went to the beach, we painted the front door. One day, we saw a movie. That’s right, a movie.

Then one night the phone rang.

“Hey, Ditka,” my wife said. “It’s for you.”

Before long, I had a roster with the names of more than a dozen soccer players, ranging in age from 6 to 7.

“Hello?”

“Hello?”

This is how the phone calls always go, with me saying “hello” several times, then the other person repeating it over and over, as if practicing a new language.

“Hello?”

“Hello.”

“Hi, I’m a coach for . . .”

“Hello?”

“Can you hear me?” I yell, talking extra loud now, because this phone line doesn’t go directly to the house I’m calling two miles away. Apparently, the signal has been routed through Pakistan, then to a communications satellite on the far side of the moon.

“Hello?!”

“Mom!” I hear from the other end.

Whoever answered the phone sets it down. It slips from the counter, then bounces six or eight times on a tile floor.

“Mom!” I hear the kid yell in the background. “It’s some guy!”

A dog sniffs the phone. A door slams. After that, there is silence. A long silence. I can’t tell for sure, but I think maybe they have left the house, their phone dangling there on the floor with the dog sniffing it as the signal travels to the moon and back. Me just waiting. Fifteen minutes later, somebody picks it up.

“Hello?”

“Hello,” I say, then explain to the parent that I’m a coach and that their daughter is on my team and that we will have a meeting in a week or two to go over some of the details.

After I hang up, I do this a dozen more times, once for each player. Doesn’t take long. If I start early Saturday, I can be done by late Sunday night.

“Hello?”

“Hello.”

“Hello?”

“Hello.”

And now, we are here on this practice field--them watching me, me watching them--meeting for the very first time.

To pass the time, we do some simple drills, dribbling around orange cones and around coaches, then blasting goal kicks, sometimes eight or 10 feet at a time.

As they practice, I wander among them, yelling things that make no sense, which is pretty much a coach’s job.

“Remember, Babe Ruth struck out 1,300 times,” I yell when one of them misses the ball.

“OK, coach,” they say, wondering who this Babe Ruth person is and which team she played for.

And before you know it, the first practice is over.

“Nice job, girls,” I say, meaning every word.

“Thanks coach,” one says, grabbing her water bottle.

“Thanks coach,” a parent says, grabbing her kid.

“Nice job, Ditka,” the little red-haired girl says, imitating her mother and smiling a little, because Ditka sounds like a word she isn’t supposed to use.

“Who’s Ditka?” a teammate asks.

“He’s Ditka,” the little girl says, triggering one last round of giggles for the day.

“Nice job, Ditka,” the teammate says.

“Nice job, yourself,” I say.

* Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.