Okay, so maybe hate is a strong word. But I don’t always enjoy it very much. Tonight was different. It was Sarah’s last practice and the parents got on the field and we all played together: kids v. parents. That was fun. My shoe fell off at one point. The girls loved that.
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What I hate most is the field we’ve been playing at. This is our third (?) year here. Emma has been playing at the JCC, where the soccer field is right next to a six-lane highway.  I’m not kidding.
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It’s loud. There is a constant drone of cars and trucks. I almost expect an 18-wheeler to barrel through the chain-link fence and the lilac trees hiding it.
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Tonight was our last practice at the JCC. Then it’s time for the big tournament and soccer.is.over. I won’t really miss it.
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I feel a pang when I watch Emma play soccer, a somewhat brackish feeling of anxiety, mixed with a healthy dose of déjà vu.
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Here is a typical scene:
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As you see, I’ve marked her location in relation to her team. Every week it’s the same. She doesn’t really try. Her teammates chase the ball in a pack while she chases her teammates. I’ve seen her run. And she can RUN. But here, as you see in this picture, she’s not running. She’s jogging along like a flamingo in an onion patch. She doesn’t want to get in the middle of it for fear of getting hurt. She just doesn’t go for it.
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Half the kids on her team are boys. They attack the ball with absolute ferociousness. They go for it all the time. They go for it with gusto. They slide and dive and fall. The ball hits them in the face. They get dirty. There are tears, sure, if an elbow meets an eye socket MAYBE, but not if the ball hits them in the arm.
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I’m a bit of a yeller, I’m afraid. If I see she’s daydreaming I shout out to her. Not in a mean way. Okay, maybe I’ve been known to yell “wake up!” but I usually just call her name and tell her to go after the ball.
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At the beginning of the year everyone was told to leave the coaching up to the coaches. So where does that leave me and my yelps of encouragement from the sidelines? Why aren’t the coaches prompting her a little more to get in on the action? Why do they let her gallop alongside? Is it because she’s seven? IÂ already know the answer.
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This also gets me thinking about the place of positive reinforcement in the parenting world. Is it wise to heap praise on kids for mediocre achievement? As parents we certainly want to encourage our kids, but what if they’re really not that good? And how can this affect a kid in the long term? Does it create a person with confidence or with a falsely over-inflated self-esteem?
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Don’t get me wrong, I’m not disappointed in Emma’s anti-competitive spirit. I love her for her sensitive little soul. I just hope she eventually finds something she likes, something that she’s good at. Like I did with competitive swimming.
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But as I watch her I can practically taste the awkwardness. It’s something about team sports. For me it was soccer and baseball. I played because my friends played, but I wasn’t ever good. It’s a familiar feeling – limbs akimbo – it’s as if your body is made of nothing but long arms and long legs and nothing works exactly like you want it too. Worse: your feet misbehave, and it’s almost as if you need to learn how to use your own body again. It’s the reason I always sucked at gymnastics.
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Next year’s league is girl-only. I wonder if she’ll continue with soccer. If she does join, I wonder if (and how) it will be different.
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Sarah is a different story. She likes to get in there. She attacks the ball. The look on her face is hilarious. I know she’s doing the “cheetah run,” as she calls it. She’s gritting her teeth and her eyes are focused and hard. She’ll tumble, and sometimes cry, but it doesn’t get her down.
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These are two kids who share the same genes. They’re sisters who are only 23 months apart.. but they can be so different in so many ways. This never ceases to amaze me.
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