Vuvuzela Time

Today was Jacob’s first official organized soccer game. He’s in a YMCA league for U-8 (Under 8 years old). Due to no one else offering to take the job, I’ve been selected as volunteer assistant coach. I won’t know if I am allowed to do so until the background check comes in, but given that I’ve passed those before, this shouldn’t be any issue.

In U-8 soccer, you play on a 60′ by 40′ field with smaller goals. You also only play 8 men on the field. You need six to start the game.

Jacob’s team has a total of eight players on it. 3 Latinos, 3 African Americans, Jacob, and one kid whom I’ve not seen yet. If “The Bad News Bears” were translated into soccer terms, this would be that team minus the Chico’s Bail Bonds sponsorship.

Today, six showed up for the game. We played against a team from Richardson. Now, Garland’s a big city–the ninth largest in Texas. We have a wide range of socioeconomic factors going on. Richardson, or at least parts of it, is more homogeneous. Across from us were 16 kids, all decked out in matching outfits–shorts, socks, the full kit–against 6 rag-tag, 2 sessions of practice boys.

We had six; we played.

Jacob started in goal. Now, Jacob has the general idea of goalie down, meaning “keep the ball out of your net”, but he doesn’t have some of the basic goalie skills down, like “use your hands”, “pick up the ball”, and “don’t kick it straight to the other team”. These factors made the first half interesting. The other team kept pressing deep into our turf, but our one kid playing sweeper was doing an effective job as sole defender of the realm. The other three kids played… some sort of position. You know, no matter how much you tell them to spread out, they all cluster around the ball like bees around their hive. So we’d make a bit of forward progress, then one of our kids would take it from another of our kids, and….

Jacob failed to secure a slow roller right before halftime, and we went into the break down 1-0. The other team was only playing five people up, so we actually were able to hang with them.

After halftime, Jacob moved to forward. Surprisingly, most of the action in the second half was in the other team’s end. Jacob had a shot on goal that was stopped by the keeper, but he did get credit for the own goal the other team scored. 1-1. Maybe the underdogs could pull it off….

The Richardson team drove deep and got around our defense, sending probably the only really good pass of the day to a wide open man who deposited it in the back of the net. 2-1.

There were some flared tempers. One of our kids and one of theirs got into a pushing match that resulted in yellow cards for both of them. After that incident, you could see the other team ganging up on our guy, surrounding him and talking right in his face during throw-ins, etc. Real classy stuff. Admittedly, the kid on our team is a hothead who expresses himself physically, but still, the incident was over.

The game ended, and our heroes, outnumbered 20 to 1 by the enemy, survived and made a decent showing of it.
At the end of the game, the kids all slap hands and say “good game”. I was in line and slapped some hands, and some kids on the Richardson team had their hands turned around and were saying “bad game, bad game”.

Now, most of the time, I wouldn’t get upset about something this petty, but after the on-field stuff, after being outmanned, after our not giving up… if I’d had my act together, I would have grabbed the kids, taken them to their coach, made them repeat that to him, found their parents, made them repeat it to them, and then maybe, just maybe I’d be okay with it.

But I didn’t realize it until afterwards, and it wasn’t until after we were leaving the field that I got mad about it. This makes me wonder why I should get upset over this. It’s just a game, right?

No, it’s more an attitude of “better than you” that makes me angry. And sad, too, because those type of things are hard to take when you’re 7. Heck, they’re hard to take when you’re an adult.

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One Response to Vuvuzela Time

  1. Mark Hitri says:

    That kind of poor sportsmanship is a learned behavior. I miss the sound of a vuvuzela. It might not be a bad idea to contact the other coach still. I would hope that it could be “a learning expereience” those kids.

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