How It All Began

My daughter plays travel soccer. She’s only 10 now, but we are coming up on our fourth year of the madness. And I don’t exaggerate when I say "madness." Something about competitive sports brings out the competitiveness in everyone about everything.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that I wasn’t competitive before travel soccer, because I was. I made it my mission to win at Candy Land – against three year olds. Think whatever you want about that, but I think it’s important to know that it’s okay to lose. And that it’s okay to win. And to know how it feels when you lose and your mother rubs it in your face for an entire week that, you are in fact, a smart and beautiful child, you just can’t seem to master Candy Land. And when you finally do beat your mom at Candy Land, you need to know how to rub it in her face – with grace and respect. Needless to say, my kids prefer to win, but they know that losing is just part of playing the game.

Okay – enough about my parenting, back to travel soccer – Our first fall season of travel soccer was misery. We were going up against teams that had been practicing together for a full year – or two. Our opponents were fast, knew their positions and had serious ball moves. Liz was 8. And just to clarify, we were playing against 8 year olds. We practiced twice a week for 1 ½ hours. We played only six games in four months and they were horrifying. We got creamed, skinned, shellacked and any other word you can think of that would equate to a 13 to nothing loss. (I do tend to exaggerate, but this time – it’s all for real.)

Now – here’s the amazing thing. After our last game of the fall season, most of the girls on the team didn’t want to give up. They wanted to get back. They wanted to win. And that is just what they did.

Our coach, Coach #1, was moving back to England and our manager found a replacement. It was sort of an amazing feat. We don’t really have many coaches to choose from in our area. And who on earth would take a team in the middle of a soccer year with such an outstanding record (Record Reminder: 0-6, with only one goal scored in the entire six games.)?

Enter Coach #2. We also picked up a few new girls so that we had enough players for two teams. At the time we played 6v6 so there were about 16 girls total. Now, Coach #2 came in and took over – no looking back. When he showed up to our first practice, he got right to business. He went from drill to drill. Practices started early and ended late. Additionally, he set up optional practices and optional trainings and optional pick-up games. When it rained, we made places to practice inside. On more than one occasion, we played on one quarter of a church gym floor while men played basketball on three sides of us.

Winter came and we continued to practice and practice and practice. Then we got brave and signed up for our first indoor tournament at a local high school.

The last practice before this tournament, Coach #2 looked at the girls and said, “Are we going to win tomorrow?” The new girls said, “YEAH!” with all the enthusiasm in the world. The girls who had been driven down Humiliation Lane the six games prior said nothing.

There were six teams in that tournament, two of them were ours. Both teams won their first travel soccer game that weekend. One of the teams, won their first tournament.

And so it went. With two teams, we needed two coaches and so another was hired. The girls were split into two teams. The split brought a little drama to our little team and opened my eyes to something I had never heard of before - “parity.” I had no idea what it was, but I definitely have an opinion now.

Are you surprised?