Valiantly Riverdancing Their Way to the Goal

She has always been an athlete of some promise, small and quick with occasional bursts of brilliance. From the moment she first walked, there were hints of great things ahead. When she turned 3, the Dodgers tried to sign her.

“Sign right here,” the Dodger scout said, “and you’ll be our third baseman of the future.”

“I think she should finish preschool first,” her mother insisted.

Looking back, it was the right decision.

Now the little girl plays soccer, on fields damp as a dog’s kiss, showing up early to set up goals and check out the conditions.

“These lines are a little crooked,” she says one morning as she studies the sideline markings.

“They’ll be fine,” I say.

She stands there checking out the field, looking like a leprechaun in her bright green uniform, her red hair combed by the wind.

“They’re a little crooked, Dad,” she says, wishing someone would do something.

In time, her teammates begin to arrive, some of them running, others walking slowly, as if in pain.

They are a talented team, a team of some promise. Every once in a while, a Dodger scout shows up, looking for infielders. Fortunately, the mothers shoo them all away.

“Over here,” the little girl says, calling her teammates over for warmups. “Over here.”

They are largely self-taught, this team. By the third practice, I had run out of things to teach them, so they took it upon themselves to do most of their own coaching. Much like some of the local college football teams.

“Listen, you guys,” the team’s leading scorer tells them in a pregame huddle. “If you want to keep playing together, we need to win today.”

“We do?” I ask.

“If we lose, our season’s over,” she says.

“Wow,” I say.

“Who’s he?” someone asks, nodding in my direction.

“He’s sort of our coach,” the little girl explains.

And the whistle blows and we take the field, running our various offenses, playing hard, playing smart.

As usual, we start with our wishbone offense, then switch almost immediately to the triangle.

“Triangle!” I scream from the sidelines, which is our secret signal for switching to the triangle. “Triangle,” I scream.

As far as I know, we are the first little girl soccer team to install the triangle offense, the same offense that propelled the Chicago Bulls to six world championships.

It’s a complex offense that relies on a selfless commitment and Michael Jordan, neither of which we have. But we’re sticking with the triangle. Somehow, we’re going to make the triangle work.

“Try not to fall down so much!” I yell, sounding like Phil Jackson. “And keep your hands out of your shorts!”

For the most part, this game goes well. At one point in the second quarter, the forwards break into a production number from “Riverdance,” the huge Irish song-and-dance extravaganza starring Michael Flatley.

“What are they doing?” one of the parents asks.

“ ‘Riverdance,’ ” I tell them. “It was a huge Irish song-and-dance extravaganza starring Michael Flatley.”

“Oh,” says the parent.

By halftime, we are ahead by a goal.

As the players chomp their halftime oranges, I gather them around for a quick pep talk.

“The sign of a great team is how it handles second-half adversity,” I tell them.

They tilt their heads like puppies when I tell them this. In fact, they tilt their heads like puppies a lot. In the team photo, their heads are all tilted. It looks like an adoption flier for the SPCA.

“What’s adversity?” the little girl finally asks.

“I’m not sure,” I say.

“Once, when I was 4, I got a bee sting,” a midfielder says.

“Ouch,” they all say, remembering bee stings of their own.

“My neck swelled up like a watermelon,” the midfielder says.

“Last night, my cat got sick,” a defender says.

With all that in mind, they take the field for the second half.

“Anybody want me to tell them a secret?” the little girl shouts as they take their positions. “Anybody?”

In the second half, we start out with something different. We begin with a flying wedge maneuver that involves two groups of players marching toward each other like Prussian soldiers entering Austria.

We have never practiced this particular maneuver. Outside of the Prussian Army, no one has ever used this maneuver.

“Triangle!” I shout from the sidelines. “Go back to the triangle!”

I am turning colors now, like a maple tree, starting from the top and working down. You see that a lot in soccer coaches. Late in the second half, their leaves change.

“Triangle!” I yell over and over again.

I don’t get excited like this too often. Like a lot of youth soccer coaches, I have no real investment in whether we win or lose, except in how it validates my role as a man and my worth as a human being. Besides that, I just don’t care.

“Triangle,” the parents all yell.

And on a crisp December day better suited to hockey, the Green Scream soccer team somehow finds a way to win.

On the way out, I stop to pick up candy wrappers. It is my Walden Pond, this soccer field, as close to nature as I get in late fall--grass, fresh air, candy wrappers, discarded drink bottles--this little field has it all.

Crooked lines. Triangles. Leprechauns. This field has everything.

“Dad, see how crooked those lines are?” the little girl says as we make our way out.

“They’re fine,” I say.

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