Pain and Soccer

My wife and I have been conned into playing on a soccer team for the next couple of months. About 3 months ago we were supposed to play soccer and we trained and got in reasonable shape for it, only to have it fall through at the last minute. So about a week ago, we get called by Jake, the soccer organizer, and are told that we will be playing in five days. Of course when I showed up last night to play, the last time I exercised was about 3 months ago, when I gave up training for soccer.

For those people that don’t know a thing about soccer (me until last night), it is not a game to play when you are out of shape. I have never run so much in my life.

Our roster:

• Jake – The organizer. Played lots of soccer up till high school. He is freshly out of college, so that wasn’t so long ago. He is also terribly out of shape. Though he doesn’t run around much, he is boisterous and friendly-obnoxious, so he makes the game tres fun.
• Shelah – Our ringer. She was a super good soccer player in high school, and she is in shape. She had the best “feel” for the game of anyone there. I would have listed her above Jake in this list, but Jake organized it, so he gets the top rank.
• Michael – Probably the best guy player on the field. And only because Shelah wasn’t timid about bossing him around. So he got the best coaching. He also flat-out missed a wide open shot that I will anecdote-up a bit later in this post
• Alex – Played soccer in middle school where he was the goalie. His team went to state or some kind of top honor. You wouldn’t know it though by watching him play. He did score the first goal of the game for us. And he is in shape. He’ll probably get real good, real fast. But he’s not there yet.
• Rebecca – Best of the over-30 club. She basically sat on offense and body checked people that passed by her. I bet she got something like 15 touches on the ball the entire game. (For those not soccer savvy, a touch means just what you would think it means – she touched the ball 15 times during the game – which isn’t a lot.)
• Adam – I am going to rank myself over my wife just because I can. But really, Rebecca, Laurie and myself were all in the same class as well as in the over-30 club. I have a lot of anecdotes about me later in this post. Laurie could argue that I am responsible for more points scored against us than anyone else. And she’d be right. But it’s my blog, so I am above her. I must note that I have played soccer 3 times in my life -- all in the 5th grade. Oh yeah, and I was picked last in all three of those games. I got less than 15 touches all night.
• Laurie – My wife. She actually knows what she is doing (she used to date a soccer coach). But she is out of shape, and worst of all, too nice. She had a hard time fighting for the ball. Mostly she would run up the opposing player that had the ball and then slightly bow and wave her hands towards the goal and say “After you”. Okay, I am just joking. She actually said, “Excuse me”. Okay, I am still joking. She actually said, “Do you have any Grey Poupon?”
• Kade – Lowest on the list because he refused to play. He did, however, show up to watch us play, so Jake calls him our cheerleader. I think he was scared that he was gonna play worse than all of us – now that he has seen us play, he should know that that is impossible.

Some facts:

• Our team name is “The Ballas” which is some language for saying “The Ball Players”
• This is a co-op league so there has to be as many girls as guys
• Guys can only have 3 consecutive ball touches before they have to get rid of the ball
• Guy goals are one point
• Girl goals are two points
• It’s an indoor soccer match, so it’s hard to kick the ball out of bounds. Typically the ball bounces off of walls and whatnot.
• No dive kicking
• No Pele kicking
• For every 5 points you are losing by, you can put another team member on the field. We played 7 on 6 most of the game. We could have played 9 on 6, but we didn’t have that many people.

So I think the best summary of this game is the following email I got from Jake this morning. He is a bit jumbled in his thoughts, but I think it conveys the game properly. The person mentioned as “Cannon” was the other team’s girl ringer. She did most of the scoring on their team. I keep telling Jake that he should use his masculine wiles to get her on a date so he can woo her to our team. But he just scoffs at that suggestion. Anyway, here is his recount:

[Modified only for grammar and spelling.] All righty peeps! That was a blast. I enjoyed myself even though I was winded most of the time. But trust me, it'll be 2wice as easy next time, especially if we put together a practice once a week. This will probably be after work on a day besides Wednesday. Any suggestions? Anyways here's the recap: Kickoff, 5 seconds into the game Alex blows past the entire defense; Laurie's stunned thinking to herself, "What was that?" Our cheerleader Kade roots Alex on as he pulls off the greatest move Pele’ ever dreamed about. Alex blasts a shot and it ricochets off of 2 defenders and the goalie; everyone stunned, the ball crosses the line. Kade is overcome with joy. Then... it went uphill for the opposing team. Cannon blasted through our defenses over and over, scoring 2 points a pop. Shelah and Alex successfully thwarted her intentions, but, alas, Adam and I just weren't cut out on that particular day on a stormy, cold winter night to brave both the elements and Cannon's successive unyielding power. And then late in the 2nd half, they are only up by 9 goals (girl goals that is) so we still have a chance. Michael is open and gets the ball. Kade's overcome with joy again until Michael changes his name to Michael dot Klutz. His glory ends as his face meets the Astroturf. Kade looks away in disgust. But then at the end when all hopes of winning the game were lost, Rebecca steals the ball away from the players, clutching on to the last 45 seconds in the game. Somehow she body checks Cannon into the wall and passes to me. Me pass it to Michael and then to Shelah. The dream soccer couple juke and jive and then Shelah passes back to her loving Klutz, and amazing Klutz Klicks and Klangs like King Kong, stays on his feet and GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL. Yes, we were in Brazil but that last goal, the announcer was cheering us. Kade was overcome with joy. Long story short: 19-4, we had 4 1 goal for Alex (assisted by the other Goalie) 2 goals for Jake, assisted by the Ballas (my memory escapes me) 1 goal for Michael, assisted by Shelah

Okay I’ll end this post with a trio of anecdotes about the game:

Anecdote #1: Adam as Goalie

Okay when I showed up I looked at field, all 70 yards of it, and just felt tired. So I petitioned heavily for the job of goalie. My reasoning was that the goalie doesn’t have to move much compared to the rest of the team (a true assessment). What I didn’t know was that the goalie pretty much gets abused – either physically by being pelted with hard kicked soccer balls – or emotionally by being ruthlessly gangbanged in an assault of knees, passes and fake-outs. I would like to say I was abused physically, but that’s not the case. I was abused emotionally. Within 7 minutes after the hour-long game had started, the opposing team was winning 8 to 1. All those points came from four girl goals; all four of those girl goals were made by the Jake dubbed “Cannon”.

Three minutes into the game, and just seconds after Alex scored the first goal for our side, a trio of people on the bad guy team attacks our goal. Everyone on our team is already winded and no one gets back on defense. Cannon scores to my left.

One minute after that, Cannon scores over me to the left.

Two minutes after that, Cannon scores to my right.

One minute after that, Cannon is making her approach – dribbling the ball this way and that. I am staying focused. Ready to jump right if she goes right. Ready to jump left if she goes left. Ready to jump up if she kicks it up. And that bitch kicks that damn ball right between my legs. I just sat there frozen in indecision as the ball knocked off both my knees as it made its way under my groin, straight into the goal.

End of Anecdote One.

[Notes about this anecdote: the times aren’t accurate. I made them up to tell a better story. I can’t really remember if Cannon scored all four goals. I know she scored the last goal and I know that women scored four goals on me – I have to admit I wasn’t really looking at people’s faces. When I got pushed out of the goalie slot at the 8 minute mart, the score was 9-1, their favor. So someone else scored a goal that I can’t remember.]

Anecdote #2 Adam Runs Under the Ball

So after I got banished onto the field, I didn’t really know what to do. When one of the bad guys had the ball, I’d run up to them. They would pass the ball. So I would run over to the person that now had the ball. When I would get there they would pass the ball again. Et cetera, et cetera. You get the idea.

Anyway, there was this one guy that wouldn’t pass the ball away when I got to him. Instead he would do all this fancy footwork and always put the ball on the other side of his body. It was quite impressive. Still, the guy pissed me off. I was determined to steal the ball from him at least once during the game.

So right before the half he has the ball and is driving to our goal. I am in hot pursuit, chasing him at full speed. He stops so abruptly that the ball is a full stride from him. He is standing still, and I am already in motion. I have a good angle to the ball, and the ball is too far away from him for him to toe it behind his body. I’ve got him!

Right when I get up on the ball, that bastard does a stretch kick and pops the ball straight up in the air a good 10 feet. I run right through and under the ball. Since I was running so fast, by the time I stopped and turned around, my nemesis corralled the ball and was making his way to the goal with it. I’m not sure, but I think he got called for touching the ball too many times – but still, the insult rang true.

End of Anecdote Two.

[Notes: I did eventually steal the ball away from this guy about 5 minutes from the end of the game. He actually swore to me when I did it, so I know he was trying his best to keep it from me. I think he was using me as some kind of ball handling practice.]

Anecdote #3: Michael Misses the Goal

Last anecdote, and then I’m done. This one was actually mentioned in Jake’s recap earlier, but I don’t believe he did it justice. So I’m doing it again.

Somewhere in the game, the other team started to play much looser, which I guess you can do when you are up by 15. Their goalie started coming off of defense much quicker and they were trying to give every member of their team a goal. In a fit of determination, we shut out their worst player from scoring. (And their worst player would have been 3rd best on our team).

During this fiasco, our shots on their goal were few and far between. Still there was one time when Shelah and Michael were running down field towards the opposing goal. Shelah had the ball, and the goalie charged her. She kicked it to Michael. Mike touched the ball once to control it. Then touched the ball again to get it moving forward towards the bad guy’s goal. It was just dribbling forward… Still, he had one more touch.

The whole field was quiet. Two other soccer teams were in the stands – they were playing next. They all quieted and watched in amazement. Our entire team froze in wonder. The bad guy team turned and stared. They were all playing offense. No one was back to protect the goal and their goalie was nowhere to be seen – Shelah had him tied up elsewhere. It was like time had stopped for everything except Michael and the soccer ball.

As Michael reared back for his final touch before scoring a wide-open goal, his silhouette was bracketed by the piping that marked the opposing scoring area. He was in perfect position, squarely in the middle, impossible to miss…

And then, inexplicably, he tumbled to the ground, like the crash test dummy on Mythbusters.

Worse, he landed on the ball.

If he hadn’t touched it again, the ball would have meandered slowing through the goal posts on its own. But instead he collapsed on top of the ball and as it squirted out from under him, it went straight to Shelah and the bad guy goalie.

Everyone in the facility moaned out loud. Michael threw up his hands and he staggered back up -- not in a wailing, woe-is-me, kinda way mind you, but more like Harry Houdini escaping from a straight jacket kinda way.

Somehow Shelah managed to corral the ball and give it back to Michael, who tried to head butt it into the goal. But instead it went straight back to Shelah and the goalie. Shelah, in a fit to get something out of all this, tried to kick the goal herself – but was ultimately thwarted by the goalie, as the ball went out of bounds, about 30 over the wall.

End of Anecdote Three.

[Notes: I went round and round on how to convey just how Michael went down to the tuff on this one. It defies description. Collapsed, crumbled, shambled, fell, tripped, disaterped, staggered? Wait, did I just make up a word there? Diz-a-ter-ped. Yes, yes I did. And you know what? That was the word I was looking for to describe Mike’s fall. Mike disaterped on top of the ball. Dang it, I wish I had come up with that sooner. Oh well…]