Recollections of Junior Girls' Soccer

Forget about the Premier League for a minute and let’s talk about amateur football and specifically our kids.  A few years ago, I coached my daughters, let’s call them Emma, Megan, and Trinity, for a total of sixteen seasons in the American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO).

I only coached Emma for one year. She turned out to have two left feet and gave it up in favor of cross-country.  Then again, my coaching instructions were nothing special ‘Send the goal kicks out wide to the wings!’ ‘Just throw the ball down the line!!’ While all the parents screamed ‘Shoot!’ as if, on the edge of the opposing box, our girls were going turn around and attempt a back pass! The players swarmed the ball like angry bees and when someone went on a dribble they only ever stopped after they crossed the goal line!  Sometimes they never stopped!

Megan’s best season was the middle year in Junior High, 8th Grade. You know how they always choose a team name based on the color of their uniforms?!  Well that year the shirts were day glow orange and since it was the height of the Harry Potter craze they chose Weasleys as the team moniker. I used to write them two or three emails a week and I pretended, in the subject line, that I didn’t know how to spell it.  So they were variously addressed as Weazlis, Weazels, Ouizlez, Wheezeless, etc.  A girl from the next block dislocated her knee and I remember how her father swept her up in his arms and drove her to the hospital!  The Weasleys finished the regular season unbeaten. But unfortunately when it came to the playoffs they had a conflict – final dress for some performance or other.  So half the team showed up late to the first playoff game with their animated conversations still focused on the drama!  Our team’s 13 year old sharpshooter roofed it from 25 yards but we went down 2-1!

Trinity, the youngest of my three girls, started in AYSO at age 4. I was used to the drill by then and I decided to coach both my daughter and her younger brother Wayne. Wayne’s older brother had played AYSO right through to High School Co-Ed. Right now he’s a useful Ultimate Frisbee player with The Thundering Herd, Clapham, England!

It was the year of the Beijing Olympics and with astonishing creativity Trinity’s team named themselves The Olympians! Wayne’s red shirts evoked a safer, more pedestrian Red Devils!  Each team had a standard – a flag complete with flagstaff to adorn the touch line. Two Olympians/Ref Devils of the week got to choose a soccer-themed prize from the goody bag.  Amazingly it always seemed to work out that every player got exactly two turns over the course of the season!

In that first season Trinity had a teammate called Libby who just stood stock still on the pitch. The ball might hit her but she never reacted!  I guess she had some kind of challenge.  I never saw her again but I hope her parents persevered with sports therapy and that their daughter blossomed, as daughters will!

With two teams to manage, sometimes the schedule was a bit tight (!) but I had help from Tom with the boys and Anne with the girls. One year the teams’ playoff game ended in a penalty shootout. Chanel really wanted to take one and so perhaps against my better judgment I let her. As I might have predicted, she toe-ended it gently to the goalie!

I can’t claim to have contributed much beyond positive reinforcement. Great play, Felicity!  Nice pass, Natalia!  Get up, Amelia, I think you’re ok!  But despite some minor tragedies, by the time it got to the end of a very short season with maybe eight games and perhaps a dozen practices I was always amazed. Amazed by how much better they were! Like night and day!  I can claim no credit at all!  If you want to teach new tricks just look for young dogs!!

And so many dedicate their time to this beautiful game. Managers and coaches, referees and linesmen, parents and grandparents. At all levels, recreational and traveling teams, village teams and pub teams, seniors and children. Never mind the Guardiolas, Pochettinos, and Klopps of this world!  You should look elsewhere for the true heroes of the technical area!

(Names have been changed to protect the once innocent!)