As my friend Matt and I rolled up to the St. Paul Catholic School parking lot for our first day of coaching, we mused over how we might approach our new gig.
Keep it light and fun? Turn into drillmasters with frequent blasts of a shrill whistle? Or somehow find a way to juggle both of those ideologies and mold our new group of 3rd and 4th graders into a winning machine? Unfortunately for us newbies, we were about to find out that the path to coaching isn’t that simple. But a long, sometimes vexing season was worth it when these kids got the chance to experience the beautiful game for the first time.
My relationship with soccer goes back to my elementary school days as a rec league participant, and continues unabated today with an almost unhealthy obsession to watch every overseas game possible (yes, that sometimes means waking up at 4:30 a.m. for the early bird matches). But almost all the elementary schoolers on our team had never so much as kicked a ball in their life. That meant no throwing out formations like 4-3-3 right away, no diving into terminology like “playing a high line,” and no expecting them to know what a wall pass was right off the bat.
Instead, it was back to basics. A learning process from the ground up, but not just for them. Just as they’d never kicked a ball, I had never coached how to kick a ball. We embarked on this journey together, ready to see what this strange season had in store and how our team might stack up. I’ll admit, it was tough getting things off the ground. Starting from square one proved a difficult task, but as understanding grew, the fun came organically. Over the first couple of weeks, the kids got a grasp of the basics and were able to start stringing together some relatively impressive passing sequences up and down the field. And some of the positive play translated to games. One of our powerhouse forwards kept banging in goal after goal, sometimes running the length of the field solo before finishing off a move. One of our midfielders charged around channeling fire and brimstone, stealing the ball repeatedly and sending boys twice her size toppling to the floor, cueing up cheers from her teammates.
But for all the improvement, there was still a large skills gap. Many of our preppy-ish opponents had seasoned young players. Think students that had soccer training year round, both at competitive school programs and paid travel teams. Against them, we didn’t stand a chance. The best option was to put on a brave face and weather the upcoming storm as best as possible. But despite some lopsided scorelines, the kids kept running themselves into the ground and putting themselves out there. No one asked to come off the field during a heavy defeat, and there were few complaints about being pulled to and fro by a superior side in sweltering Memphis heat. And the motivation was only enhanced by the parents having full attendance at every game, pushing their kids on and cheering until the final whistle blew.
There were a few teams in the league closer to our level, and that’s where our new charges really thrived, clearly relishing a competitive environment in which they scored some pretty good goals, too. These matches were close-fought affairs, but in the end, the season closed with a greater focus on moral victories, as opposed to tangible ones. There were plenty of instances that made me involuntarily place my head in my hands, but they continued on unperturbed.
I myself am no stranger to losing seasons as a player, but these kids certainly handled it better than I did. While there were no victories, they’d been able to get their first taste of soccer. For a few hours after school and on the weekends, they could forget about school, gather together with their friends and classmates, and kick a ball around without a care in the world. There were plenty of goals, some crunching tackles from one of our most tenacious players, and a good amount of mistakes. But that’s all part of the learning curve. And while I couldn’t lead them to sporting success, they turned out from the first day to the last, full of smiles, laughter, and tenacity. And based on their reactions, I’m willing to bet they counted that as a win.