Rough Around The Edges But A Heart Of Marshmallow

Thing One and Petunia share a soccer coach.  To say that he is blunt would be an understatement of epic proportions: he's one of those inherently loud Northeasterners (originally from the NYC area, I would guess, based on his choices in sports teams) who speaks his mind in no uncertain terms and often in profanity-laden ones, depending on his audience.  Having seen the man coach teenaged boys first, I was more than a little dubious about how that would translate to my ten year-old daughter, but fortunately he is able to filter himself around the girls.  As a coach, he is a yeller, albeit one every bit as quick to yell praise as criticism.  Petunia was terrified of him until she got used to his decibel level, but her first choice for next year is his team, if that tells you anything about the turnaround in her opinion of him.

Anyway, this evening there was a tryout for his team.  I was running back and forth between three fields between the three kids, so I didn't get to watch as much of the tryout as I would have liked, but Petunia seemed to be doing an awful lot of sitting on the sideline and was looking rather forlorn as a result.  After a while, he called her over to him and they had one of those conversations between a coach and a player that you sometimes see on the sidelines of a televised football game, where the coach is holding a clipboard in front of his face so you can't read his lips.  After a minute or two, she nodded and then he told her to grab a pinney and sent her into the game.  I asked her about that in the car on the way home.  She said that he called her over to reassure her that she wasn't playing much because they already knew that she was going to make the team and there were other players he needed to look at more.  Clearly he understands how hard she is on herself, and he both noticed her mood and took the time to make her feel better in the middle of a busy tryout.

Strangely enough, he had a very similar interaction with Thing One last weekend, adjusted for age and gender.  Thing One is one of those kids who takes his job on the field very seriously.  Whenever he's pulled out of a game, if there's any question at all about it, the first thing he does is ask the coach if he did something wrong.  It's actually become kind of a running joke with the coaches although they do legitimately appreciate that he's asking because he wants to get it right the next time.  The boys had two games last weekend, a regular league game on Saturday and a huge State Cup game on Sunday.  Before the Saturday game, the coaches told the boys that they were trying to figure out a way to win the game while resting the starters as much as possible for Sunday, so they should be expecting some odd assignments on the field.  Thing One was one of the boys told to expect to sit more than usual.  He played most of the first half and came out just before halftime.  He didn't go back in after halftime, and seemed ok until every other boy sitting out at the time was sent back in other than him, at which point he actually started pacing up and down the sideline.

As he recounted the conversation afterward, around then this coach asked what in the world he was doing, and he asked if he was going to get back into the game.  The coach looked at him and said, "I already told you that you were going to sit more than usual today.  When there's a big game, you play every damned minute of it because we need you in there, and you know it as well as I do.  Now sit your &%$&% ass down on that bench and &%#$& REST!"

Clearly, his internal marshmallow takes different forms with ten year-old girls and fourteen year-old boys, but no doubt it's there in both cases.  The man cares deeply about the kids he coaches and both of my kids are fortunate to have him training them.  My daughter is also fortunate that he has that filter!

Yeah, I Guess A Few Things Have Changed

2018: My son's high school has a strict no-tolerance, no exception drug and alcohol policy.  This includes nicotine (vaped or otherwise.)

Late 1980s: My high school had a smoking lounge, and most of the kids drank alcohol well before the legal age in the US, but then again, we were outside the US.  It wasn't something we officially talked about at school, though.

Mid 1970s: See picture below, taken today of the "Class Favorites" page of a high school yearbook.  Sorry, I know it's a bit hard to read.  Aside from the clearly dated choices in musicians and actors, holy cow: do you see that their favorite brands of cigarettes (Marlboro) and beer (Heineken) are listed?  And that their favorite mixed drink was 7&7??

It also cracks me up that their favorite athlete was OJ Simpson.  Talk about a time capsule!

I Don’t See This Ending Well

A girlfriend of mine recently told me that her son was being bullied at school.  Today, she announced on Facebook that she will be homeschooling him, which is an understandable reaction, except that she both misspelled “homeschooling” and capitalized “Son” in the middle of the sentence.  I don’t mean to be unkind, I really don’t, but given that the kid is in elementary school, I hope she is either going to use a textbook or some sort of online resource to teach him Language Arts.  And much more importantly, how awful is it that a kid in this age of bullying laws could still be harassed so badly at school that his mother feels it necessary to pull him completely out of school??

Update

We found out last night that the pink socks of ferociousness came through yet again for Petunia.  She made the soccer team that the player development coach of our current club recommended that she look at. (See this post)  Since we don’t know much about the team other than that it comes recommended by a man whom we trust and respect, we’ve requested permission to bring her to a practice of theirs before we make a decision.  We shall see.  She had two games yesterday, one with each of the two teams for which she currently plays, and had excellent games in both, so it seems that things are starting to come together for her.  The difficulty will be choosing what is best for her, bearing in mind that the major objectives are that she have fun and play on a competitive team that will allow her to grow her skills, in that order.

Way More Than Just A Little Help

Himself is out of town again. Murphy’s Law being what it is, my kids have four soccer games between them today, in three different places. And in cold rain, too. Ugh.

I needed help getting Thing One from point A to point B for his game and put out an email message to his team last night to see if anyone could give him a ride. I got SIX responses, including several from people who would have to drive significantly out of their way to do it but offered anyway because they are kind souls.  I love this team. He’s staying on it as long as they’ll have him.

Whomever said that it takes a village to raise a child clearly had kids who are travel athletes. Boy, am I grateful for my village!!

Pink And Proud

My daughter has a screaming pink pair of soccer socks that she wears when she wants to inspire herself to play especially well.  She calls them the “pink socks of ferociousness.”  I love that kid.

She’s had some soccer drama surrounding her lately, mostly centered on trying to figure out where she should play next year.  (It’s tryout season again, meaning that teams are being chosen for fall 2018/spring 2019.)  To make a very long story short in an attempt not to bore you all to tears, she’s currently playing on two teams, one her own age and one a year up, but neither for various reasons is the best fit for her.  We’ve been looking at other area teams in her age group, even though that would involve her moving to a different club.  Right now all three of my kids play for the same club and we like it a lot as an organization, so that’s not ideal.

We had her try out at a couple of the clubs and subsequently found ourselves in a position where we really needed some guidance.  I called the director of player development at the current club, whom I know well, and explained the situation.  While he *really* doesn’t want her to go, he understands our thought process.  Over the course of a twenty-minute conversation, he outlined what he thought should happen with her if she stays and told us that in his opinion one of the other clubs we were looking at was a good call and that the second should be removed from consideration immediately.  Then, to his unending credit, he told us that we should also look at a team we hadn’t even considered, at which a man he knows personally coaches her age group at a high level.  He subsequently called the guy and said we were coming to the next tryout and to keep an eye out for her.

Last night, Petunia donned the pink socks of ferociousness and we went to check out this newly recommended club.  We haven’t heard anything official yet and won’t till Sunday, but our back channel suggests that she will likely receive an offer for their top team.  There isn’t a rush to settle this and we have some time, but I’m so proud of my girl that I could pop.  Not because she (supposedly) made the team, but because she’s a fierce and brave little soul who will charge headlong into a tryout full of total strangers on two days’ notice, armed only with pink socks!

Oh, and I can’t say enough good things about our player development guy either.  His willingness to go the extra mile (or hundred) to get her on the right team for her even though it might mean she ends up playing for another club speaks volumes about his integrity and how much he cares about the kids.

That Venus And Mars Thing

Sometimes I am strongly reminded that male and female brains work very differently. Yesterday was one of those days.

As a male friend and I were pulling into a parking spot at a convenience store, a woman came out of the store and got into the car in the adjacent spot.  She was too close for both of us not to register her presence. She was a larger woman with a very unusual hairstyle and a ring in her nose, all of which I noted casually to myself as she walked by.  The only thing my friend noticed was that she was wearing a Penguins sweatshirt!  He is a big hockey fan and hates Pittsburgh because Crosby is a punk.

XX versus XY for you in a nutshell, ladies and gents.