I am in my mid (well, now late forties) and grew up on the east side. There was no soccer in my school district and no (visible) soccer program. I recall playing once in gym class. As a kid who liked to jump on the ground and bump other kids around I played goalie. It was fun.
Sports for kids -- with the exception of hockey -- were run through the school district. Every athletic kid played seasonal sports: football in the fall, basketball in the winter, baseball or track in the spring and summer. Eccentric kids (mostly Italian, some Polish) wrestled in the winter. The only potential sports "conflict" was hockey because its season overlapped all the "major" sports
I remember stuffing my filthy football gear in my locker and dashing out the door, two or three times a week, to meet my mom waiting in the parking lot to take me to hockey practice.
I also remember enduring a few taunts from "tough" 8th and 9th grade boys saying I was running out because I was too scared to shower with them. This is so odd in so many ways I won't dwell on it here (but pre-teen and teen locker room etiquette certainly deserves a post of its own!).
In grade 8, football, basketball and hockey practice got jammed together somehow for a week. I developed a nasty case of Osgood Slaughter's disease in my right knee and was out for at least a month, may be longer. The crew cut pediatrician (think of the guys in Apollo 13 at Houston control) told my Mom I shouldn't play so many sports and, obedient by nature, she began to cut them all! I cried liked a tortured prisoner.
But no one sport dominated. Indeed, I was encouraged to play multiple sports. My high school basketball coach insisted I play tennis to help my footwork (don't ask...I am a better golfer).
Somewhere between being a college student and a Dad, however, everything changed. Schools can't afford sports' programs anymore. High school basketball barely counts. Your AAU (travel) performance is what matters.
And, of course, soccer dominates everything.
How, and when, did this happen? And why?
Yesterday, along with a few other Soccer Moms, I attended my daughter's school's track team parents' meeting. The coach, a teacher in the district, announced there were something like 80 kids out for track.
Wow! This is wonderful, I think. But before long the conversation turned to -- you guessed it -- soccer. Specifically, the conversation turned to soccer conflicts.
The coach was impressive here. She struck me as an experienced coach, teacher, and mom herself. That is, she made no effort whatsoever to try to compete with soccer conflicts. Her take, briefly, was this: I know many of your kids will play both (or more). But I need you here four days a week. The fifth day, she said, was open for "religious" schooling. The quiet, ironic implication was that soccer practice fell into that category. I laughed. She told a cautionary story about a kid overtraining and hurting herself. We all heard; but none of us really listened. The coach told this story out of responsibility -- but she knew no one would listen.
Having just finished up a basketball season with a group of "soccer" girls I was sympathetic. My bball team has girls from the Force (obviously), Hawks, Vardar, and B United.
We all agree -- as we did yesterday even at a FULL track meeting -- that soccer comes first. It is like a giant round planet with seems that everything else responds to as if it exerts some extraordinary gravitational pull.
My question, again: when and how did this gigantic planet enter my solar system without me noticing?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lDCYjb8RHk
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