For Calgarians, soccer season is an eight week interval between the last icy gasp of winter and the start of summer holidays. This year, rather than subjecting us to the discomforts of standing against a brisk wind making us wish we had another layer of down, a blast of snow seized the first week of my son's U6 season outright rather than leaving any questions about how cold it might get before it was determined that the kids were better off with their normal, sedentary evening routines.
For week two, we congregated at the local community centre where nets are aligned in pairs across the soccer field and went through the routine of scanning the team app that we signed up for to determine who else was on our children's team and who the coach was. My son knew that he was on the same team as one of his closest friends from daycare and further to that I knew that among his teammates was the five-year-old most likely to do a 10-metre knee slide across the field with his shirt pulled over his head and beckon the crowd's complete adoration. I'm not kidding - it is the kind of thing that sticks in your head. Last year, this kid was the only one wearing cleats, and he showed up every week in an authentic Real Madrid kit complete with Ronaldo's or somebody's name and number.
I scanned the roster on my phone and found the name of a "non-player" and as the queries about who was coaching mounted, a lean sixties-ish guy with a silver beard acknowledged his name and added that he thought he had made it clear that he said he wasn't available this year. Fortunately enough, he decided to come out to watch his grandson play and he would pitch in. He turned to me and asked, "You know anything about soccer?"
"I've kicked a ball." I didn't bother to add that the last time I kicked a ball, about ten days earlier, my efforts redefined the word "errant" and left me humbly chasing my shot up the road to throw the ball back over the fence it sailed over. I played organized soccer up until I was 15 and I had played pick-up off and on. As for coaching, I knew that I would have to take turn at some point but I thought I oiled wait another year or so. I was going to definitely miss one week and that was enough for me to rationalize putting it off another year. I was not sure if I could muster the extroversion to elicit the excitement among the kids to play or get the focus for drills that I would expect myself to aim for despite it still being the time of, "Same team, same team!" and "When's snack time?"
I was ready to coach and pitch, though feeling a bit of stage fright about trying to drill them on things for the half hour of practice that preceded a loosely officiated game. Twelve hours after the fact, it has just dawned on me that .I could start them off with some stretching and that vaguely remembered game with the numbers or something. I don't even like stretching.
Instead of taking the pressure role of leading the kids in their early paces, I seized the opportunity to lay out the cones that separated the field into units for each of the four teams. I grew hesitant with each step as I acknowledged that nobody else was laying out cones for any of the other teams. A voice in my head chided me for not jumping in and taking the lead even though the current volunteer as coach was not too reluctant to accept the task that was thrust upon him.
"You go in net with these guys. Okay?"
I immediately started to wonder about how competitive I was going to be and with each save I wondered if I was going to hear the hue and cry of parents who would complain the game wasn't fair and that I ought to let the kids-only opposition score enough to keep it fair. I was a hockey goalie growing up and those same instincts took over quite quickly. Still, I made a point of letting a goal in early to put the other team ahead before knuckling down and stopping shots aggressively. I thought I was getting a sense of how our team was doing, but they did not score as much as I had thought. There was one little pocket rocket, with plastic shin pads the glimmered with a metallic blue sheen, who had pretty good speed and a good sense of footwork with the ball and he got some decent breakaways on me and scored a few. On a separate occasion, I pulled Gabriel aside to point out a crestfallen opponent who was taken aback by a push Gabriel delivered. As the ball hit the twine behind me, the coach gently chided, "You! Penalty for parenting."
Snack time followed and I was off the hook and managed to escape the wrath of parents who thought I was playing too hard or too well. Instead, the little pocket rocket came up to me and said, "I score three goals on you." He was cute and I liked the way he played, so I gave him a fist bump instead of replying, "Two. You scored TWO, kid." With that, I was off the hook for this week, but I suspect it will be time to dust off a stretching exercise and a few games to get them enjoying some drills.
