Saturday, January 28, 2006

almost soccer season

Sitting under my left hand and the left side of the keyboard are the forms to register Big Brother and myself for the spring soccer season.
I've been coaching his various teams since his second season making this roughly our third year. We have two eight week seasons, spring and fall, so it's been about six seasons. As well as coaching, I have played on an adult team a few times in the last three years. I totally missed playing this past fall as the season snuck up on me while I waited for the phone call. Apparently a bunch of my teammates played a summer season and needed a break, so our team didn't quite form in the fall. Nice of the bunch of butts to bother calling.
I played some high school soccer when my tiny private/christian school grew too small to field a football team. I did play one season of football meaning I practiced hard all season and played roughly 20 seconds of the very last game. We did in fact suck. The last of the guys big enough to play graduated that year, so we switched to soccer for the next school year. Again, we sucked.
I also played basketball, but that has yet to come up really, though Big Brother may want to play more sports as he is now seven years old.
Momma and I, being the good punks that we claim, have been sort of anti-sport. I didn't have great memories of my sporting days, though none of the horrid jock stories some kids have. She just never cared much for sports.
I also claim my Atlanta based childhood as driving me to anti-sport type attitudes. That's a whole other rant for a whole other day though.
Add all this to the baseball strike a few years ago and Michael Jordan ruining basketball and the fact that I never really like football to begin with.
Even so, I always remember remembering soccer fondly. Now that it's become a part of our lives, I've grown to really love the beautiful game.
I need to pretend to exercise a little, try to be in shape for next season. I'm not a bad player all things considered, and even without being in shape, I can build up some small amount of stamina over the course of the season. I'm not in horrible shape, no extra weight or major health issues. I could stand to stop smoking of course, but I play with guys that will light up at half time regardless of whether or not we have subs that day.
I'm getting more and more excited. Even just proofreading through this thing is working a little magic. I need to scoop the yard of the dog placed landmines. It's pretty dangerous out there in the winter as I'm a lazy s.o.b. But once I get that little scent of soccer on the horizon, it's time to get scooping. You'd think the other scents inherent to the current dog based issue would be enough of a force, but it doesn't really work the kind of odorous magic one would expect. Also, see "lazy s.o.b." above.
Now, I wonder if John Holt wrote any books about coaching youth soccer . . .