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She Said, Z Said: Is It Already Soccer Season?
Z: Ahh. The smell of the shin guards, the twist of the ankle, the thrill of the mildly concussive header. It’s soccer season!
She: Yes, indeedy. Time to swap out the beach chairs for the soccer field chairs in my trunk.
Z: You have a trunk big enough for my car to fit into. Do we really have to swap out the beach chairs? It makes it feel like summer’s over.
She: Unfortunately, summer is over. It’s finally sunny and warm, it’s after Labor Day, and the boy is back to school. Summer is over, and it’s soccer season. Besides, my trunk is not the garage, pantry and closet. It’s a trunk. Could you get your junk out? I don’t even have enough room left over to kidnap somebody in there.
Z: Who knew that one day I’d associate the end of summer with soccer season? And felonies.
She: Soccer’s not exactly the sport we grew up playing.
Z: It used to be kind of exotic, like lacrosse, or jai alai, or roller derby. Or Quidditch.
She: All the guys I knew grew up with football, baseball and basketball.
Z: Which has led me to understand why soccer parents are very different beasts than baseball parents.
She: While there are some screaming soccer parents, it doesn’t seem to engender the same level of abject craziness that other sports do.
Z: That’s why soccer struggles to get coaches and refs, while baseball has more coaches than kids playing. Little League has dads fighting over who gets to mow the infield. All the dads understand baseball, but very few get soccer.
She: So what’s your excuse for not coaching either game?
Z: My varsity sport was a made-up game of racquetball against my garage door. I kept changing the rules so that I could always beat Chuck. I’m pretty sure they don’t need any coaches for that.
She: Koss has still managed to have plenty of good coaches.
Z: My point exactly. If I had been coaching, I don’t know if we could have said that.
She: Plenty of our goofball friends and relatives have been coaches. If they can do it.
Z: Here’s me coaching: “Kick the ball. Into the net.” After that, I got nothing.
She: You could always scream at the kids to stop screwing around.
Z: That has possibilities. Tempting, even.
She: Or park your practice right next to the club kids and copy everything they do.
Z: Another halfway decent idea.
She: Or work with them on how to improve their cartwheels.
Z: Which would have been very effective if we had a 5-year-old daughter playing soccer instead of a 10-year-old son.
She: I know. He’s starting to take it kind of seriously. It’s weird.
Z: Not that seriously. I did see him tackle one of his buddies when I picked him up from practice the other day.
She: Yeah, but that may have been because he went from flag-football practice to soccer practice that day.
Z: Do we need special chairs for flag football?
She: No, just mouth guards. Otherwise it’s $3,000 worth of braces living on the edge.
Z: I don’t even want to think about that.
She: Besides, it’s soccer season.
Z: Ahh. The swapping of the trunk chairs, the buying of the snacks, the schlepping to the practices. It’s soccer season!
She: Yes, dear.
— Are all your Saturdays occupied with soccer? Tell She and Z at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
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» on 09.14.09 @ 10:10 AM
It’s tennis, lacrosse and baseball season for us here in the South. We don’t believe in soccer…. JK! What is jai alai? Sounds like an exotic fruit. Your article had me reflecting on our kids’ coaches—thankfully, we’ve had mostly great ones through the years. One of the highlights was last Spring when Matt’s Lax coach had all the kids (age 11) change jerseys with one another right before the last game of a tournament because the opposing team’s coaches had been “spying” on our team and knew the numbers of the best kids. It was fairly comical to see 2-3 kids on the opposing team “ganged up” against a few of our least athletic kids. And it was a lesson to our kids to not worry about the competition and to just play a good/fair game no matter what.
We do highly recommend mouth guards!
» on 09.14.09 @ 11:48 AM
Our team is already practicing their cartwheels. Go Pink Sparklers!
» on 09.14.09 @ 04:42 PM
Ditto what Holly said about mouth guards. Nothing worse than $5,000 worth of braces down the drain.
» on 09.14.09 @ 09:06 PM
You captured the feeling of soccer season perfectly. I’ll look for you on the “big” fields this year. Thanks for another great column.
-Lisa Y.
» on 09.15.09 @ 10:18 AM
How funny. I just took the beach chairs out of my minivan this morning. You capture the ups and downs of family life so well.
» on 09.15.09 @ 06:22 PM
Don’t you need stadium seats for football?
» on 09.16.09 @ 09:33 AM
I laughed at loud at your comment about more Little League coaches than kids. It’s so true. Thankfully my husband hasn’t learned much about soccer.
» on 09.17.09 @ 12:37 AM
You really need chairs for footy(sorry soccer)? The match can’t last more than an hour or so. Lazy Americans. Over here its few pints down your neck, standing on the terraces chanting abuse at the ginger kid, and then a bit of the ultra violence between the under 11s and under 13s.
» on 09.17.09 @ 09:52 AM
London makes me laugh.
» on 09.18.09 @ 10:04 AM
Are you kidding? AMericans need different chairs for everything. I have soccer practice chairs and game chairs.
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