Futbol Frolics

It was a beautiful week in River Falls, but we received a rude, albeit belated, introduction to fall weather. On Tuesday, our Happy Hour group sat outside in spectacular, 77-degree sunshine. By Thursday, we awoke to snow on the ground and temperatures below freezing. Before then, despite the unusually warm weather, signs of autumn were all around. Leaves were changing color, we watched the homecoming parade downtown, and Halloween decorations appeared as early as September. A few weeks ago, we were also treated to an amazing hailstorm. I had never experienced hail aside from an occasional, pebble-sized downpour that was more snow than actual ice. The one that hit us this time, however, peppered us with large stones that broke windows, shattered skylights, and damaged roofs. The grass outside our house looked like the driving range at the Kilkarney Hills Golf Course, and there was a picture in the paper of one stone that was larger than the baseball sitting next to it.

Fall sports are also in full swing, which, for us, means volleyball games for Abigail and soccer for Lucas. On Thursday, we attempted a double-header. First up was the volleyball match at St. Bridget’s School. Abigail is on the 7^th-8^th-grade team and has shown remarkable improvement since her first foray into the sport several years ago. Unfortunately, her match started late, and, since Amber coaches the team and Ben was still at the clinic, we had to leave early to take Lucas to his soccer game. I should mention that Amber and Ben are both athletic people and have been involved with sports for their entire lives. Ben played little league baseball, high school tennis, and college golf. Amber played soccer and volleyball in high school and college, and still plays whenever she can. The kids, however, have been dragged kicking and screaming into sporting activities. Abigail has gradually learned to enjoy her sport, but Lucas has yet to show much interest in anything not associated with Star Wars or Legos.

Having been unable to see any of his matches thus far, Kathleen and I pulled our camp chairs up to the sideline of the soccer pitch, eager to enjoy our first athletic contest featuring nine-year-old Lucas. It should be mentioned that this appeared to be a beginners league, and the kids were all new to the sport. I have seen T-ball games in baseball, so I harbored no elevated expectations for this game. Still, what we witnessed could best be described as anarchy on a soccer field. It was a small field with nets only about six feet wide and four feet high. Five players at a time were on the field, with a sixth on the sideline, and they rotated through the positions, playing one of the three forward spots, then defense, then goalie, then to the sideline for a few minutes. It was a cold night, so many of the players wore gloves. Lucas, however, had no gloves, so he spent the entire match with his hands tucked firmly into the pouch on his sweatshirt. In fact, no matter where he was on the field or the sideline, or what position he was playing, he stood at attention like a tin soldier, feet together, hands in his pouch.

In the interests of full disclosure, I readily admit that I have never played soccer, and I know little about the game. So, I was an impartial observer, mentally comparing this match to other sports with which I was more familiar. The first thing I noticed was that Lucas’s team, clad in blue shirts, consisted of five boys and one girl. The opposing team wore red and had five girls and one boy. It seemed to me that one team had a distinct advantage, and I was right—but not in the way I imagined. The girls actually dribbled the ball with some skill, passed to each other, and scored about six goals during the match. The boys—not so much. As soon as a male player got access to a ball, he wound up and kicked it as hard as he could with no particular target in mind. The only basic rule they seemed to understand was that, if a team kicked a ball out of bounds, the other team received a free kick to return it to action. Several fights broke out as the boys argued about who would get the honor of the free kick. As a direct result of this nascent testosterone, Lucas’s team failed to score during the 45-minute match.

Surrounded by these aggressive teammates, Lucas took the opposite tack. Early in the match, he started in goal, and the red-clad girls maneuvered down the field while the boys ran around manically, searching for something to kick. From fifteen feet out, a small girl let loose with the first shot on goal in the match, a chest-high attempt aimed toward the center of the net. Lucas, standing in his upright, tin-soldier pose, saw it coming and sprang into action. Without removing his hands from the sweatshirt pouch or moving his feet, he deftly twisted his upper body in such a way as to cleverly avoid interfering with the ball, which, with no impediments to disturb its flight, nestled softly into the net for the game’s first score. The teams then rotated their personnel, with Luke moving to the sideline. After the next goal by the girls, they rotated again, and Lucas took a forward position. He remained at forward for several minutes, moving sparingly, apparently saving his energy for a late-game surge. At one point, a wayward ball struck him in the feet, which were, of course, still held tightly together as he stood at attention. The ball bounced off of his lower legs, and only then, with the ball several feet away, did he take a futile swipe at the elusive target. As the action moved away toward the opposing net, Luke drifted backward and wound up in the defensive spot, that player having abandoned his post to follow the action across the center line. Luke stayed there for only a brief time, though, before entering negotiations with the goalie. Surely, I thought, they are discussing some sort of strategic gem that would allow them to use teamwork to defeat any future encroachments into their territory. Not quite. It turned out that Lucas simply wanted to return to the goal rather than remain in the more taxing defensive position. A minute later, the red team scored again, and Lucas rotated to the bench, apparently his preferred position.

And so it went: A quick stint at forward, take the defensive spot, talk to the goalie and switch positions, then rotate to the bench. Over and over. Finally, with darkness enveloping the field, he broke from the goal in an all-out sprint. Until that point, I had never actually seen him run. This is it, I thought, we’ll finally get to see why he was saving his energy; this is the athletic surge we’ve been waiting for. Alas, what had actually occurred was that they had declared the game over and the coach had announced that he had cookies for everyone. Lucas was first in line.

So, I guess Ben and Amber didn’t get the soccer enthusiast they were hoping for. On the positive side, that was the first soccer match that I actually enjoyed watching from start to finish. I have tried to watch futbol matches several times, especially during the Olympics and World Cup, but could never develop much enthusiasm for the game. I’m reminded of a commercial for the sit-com Two-and-a-Half Men that I recently saw. The Charley Sheen character is sitting on a couch with his nephew, flipping channels and looking for something interesting to watch. The nephew says, “There’s a soccer game. They say that it’s the most popular game in the world with billions of fans.” Charley presses the remote-control button and says, “Good. Then we don’t have to watch it.”