Soccer

“I think we should put the baby in soccer,” was how it started.

I was in bed reading a Catholic newspaper. Father Soul was looking at being punished by the Archbishop if he did not accept his reassignment from his beloved Parish of St. Junebug. A group of Black Catholics was angry they were receiving less support from the archdiocese than similar sized parishes of other ethnicities whose collection numbers were not as strong. A priest was being sued for alienation of affection. Apparently, he ran off with a married woman who was the secretary of the school where he pastored the parish, and the soon to be ex-husband was not the happiest. I wondered if that still made him a priest. I wondered how alimony would work. It’d be hard enough to have to move out of a house I paid for so my wife could move in with her lover. It’d be worse if her lover had been under a vow of celibacy for a number of years prior. Wow.

So soccer was far from my mind.

“Does she even want to play?” It was a dumb question to ask. Kids get too many choices. I realized, however, that a choice like this would cost a couple hundred bucks and add more running around to our schedule. Scooter was in football, Scoompi was in an art class, and both were in church activities.

“It would be good for this new aggressiveness in her personality,” my wife said.

I folded my paper. Putting my pint sized daughter in a contact sport might not be the best idea. Scoompi’s strength was in attitude and force of personality. At eight, she was a whopping 35 pounds and stood at the front of the school picture composite line. I’d seen little girls play soccer. They could be mean, and some of them were gargantuan. A couple were only questionably female.

There was a knock on my bedroom door. I did a quick check to ensure the missus was dressed and called, “Come in?”

Scooter strode in, in his practice football uniform minus his shoulder pads and cleats.

“Hey ya’ll, I was reading Muslim Journal, and guess what? Grandpa is in there!”

“He’s always in there Honey,” his mother said.

“Oh. I have to be at practice in an hour.”

“OK,” I replied. “Go fix you and your sister some oatmeal for breakfast. I’ll run you over. I guess now is a good time to break it to her she’ll be playing soccer.”

Scooter looked from his mother to me.

“Really?” he asked slowly. He shook his head.

“Bad idea?” I asked.

“You’re the parents,” he shook his head ruefully. “Daddy, this is as dumb as you thinking we could pass for Native American and get a casino,” he left the room.

“I’m still working on that!” I shouted after him, but I heard him on his telephone. “Salaam Alaikum! Guess who I saw in the Journal? Yeah, you didn’t tell me they were covering you…”

“Why is it when it’s a bad idea, it has to be mine?” I asked my wife.

“Dunno.”

“More importantly, why is it when he thinks an idea is bad, and it’s yours, but he accuses me, why don’t you clarify?”


“Dunno. Don’t you have to get him to practice soon?”

“Yeah. I smell a rat.”

“Love you!”

Suddenly there was a wail, and rapid knocks on our door.

“Scooter hit me with a comb!”

Her wail was suspect. No tears. Her lip was trembling. I stared hard and she started giggling.

I yelled my son’s name. he came lumbering up the stairs, a smile on his face.

“You hit your sister with a comb?”

“Yup.”

“She probably hit him first,” the missus said mildly.

“I didn’t hit him,” Scoompi wailed, “I TRIED to hit him; he took the comb and whacked me with it instead!”


Scooter, her mother and I looked at Babygirl in awe.

“Don’t rob any banks any time soon, Kid,” Scooter muttered as he trudged downstairs. “If you want waffles, c’mon! I gotta go to practice.”

“Yummy! Waffles!”

“Wait Babygirl,” I said. I explained, hesitantly, the soccer proposition.

I broke the news to Babygirl, who was receptive. “Soccer looks fun!” she exclaimed. After we dropped her brother, we spent the afternoon buying her cleats and shin guards, and a regulation ball that appeared larger than her entire body.

Later that week, I gave the kids instructions before they left for school.

“OK, it’s your sister’s first day of practice. Scooter, the park where Scoompi practices is down the street from the school. When you get done with practice, you and K.O meet us there. Scoomp, Hamilton will join us at practice and his mom will pick him up from there. I’ll give K.O a ride home when all’s done.”

“OK!”

That afternoon, Ham and I watched on the sidelines while my daughter and her new teammates ran drills up and down the park. The coach was one of the girls’ dads. He seemed young, enthusiastic and full of hope, so this was probably his first year coaching. Most of the girls on my daughter’s team appeared to be normal little girls, in size and demeanor, which meant they could probably count on getting clobbered.

“Sir?”

“Yes, Ham?”
“Why are they all smiling?”

“They’ve never played before, Buddy. They have no idea how this is going to be.”

“Oh.”

Practice ended a little early. I shot the breeze with the kids until I saw Ham’s mom pull into the parking lot.

“OK, Scout, Dill…time to split this party up.”

She screwed up her little face. “Who? Scout and Dill? What are we? Horses? Pickles? I swear, Daddy, I don’t know how they let you teach college and you can’t even get people’s names right. Who are Scout and Dill?”

“Find out. Let’s get ready to go.”

Scooter and his best friend, K.O, arrived as planned, Ham’s mom left with him, and I drove the kids home.

“I’m so excited about our first game!”

“Mmm hmm.”

“Uh, Sis?’

“Yeah?” she was literally bouncing all over the car.

“Don’t hope for too much, OK?”

“Whatever! Yay! We’re gonna make little ponytails out of the back of our jerseys, and that’s gonna be our trademark. Even our name is cool.”

Dare I ask? “What did you girls choose?”

“Powder Puffs!”

Oh.

That Saturday, as my wife sat in her camp chair, iced tea in her cup holder, Scooter, Ham and I paced the sidelines, anxious as if awaiting an execution. My little girls’ team took the field, doing back flips, running in place, little tufts of t-shirt held by Scuncis at each of their backs. “Powder Puffs! Powder Puffs! Powder Puffs!” they chanted.

Ham had tears in his eyes. Scooter’s jaw had a hard set and his mouth was a firm line.

The ref, a thin African young man who looked like a graduate student, came forward, index card in hand...

“Today’s match is between the Powder Puffs,” he said, squinting at the card in his hand, “and the…oh, they’re playing again this year, eh? The Pterodactyls.”

I looked down at my wife. When I turned my head I heard Hamilton gasp. I swear I heard my son groan, “Zarba!”

I turned around. A group of girls in green and black uniforms came on the field in formation, dribbling the ball between them. They were making some kind of screeching noise. Fathers on the other side of the field roared. Not one of those girls smiled. They took their positions on the field. Their goalie stretched. She had a wingspan like Michael Jordan.

The game was over quickly. I’ll give it to the Pterodactyls, they demonstrated sportsmanship. Once they had a secure fifteen point lead, they didn’t focus on scoring anymore. They just calmly accepted shutting us out.

Scoompi was a glutton for punishment. “It was the first game of the season! They were just a bit luckier than us. Hey, we’ll get ‘em next time…”

The next few times were ugly. Opposing players pulling our team’s shirt ponytails. Opposing coaches offering to reduce the number of players they had on the field to two to make it even. Opposing parents varying between downright rudeness and pure sympathy.

Our coach didn’t understand. His team was falling apart. The girls on the sidelines had long stopped watching the game, cheering on their teammates. They merely huddled in fear, waiting for the inevitable when a teammate would be injured to the point where they were carried (few walked) off the field and another sacrificial lamb had to take her place.

Girls were bumped, jostled, stepped on, pushed and outright manhandled.

And the ones who were near the ball really caught hell.

All that stopped outright team fight was the appearance of several of our football players at each game, their sisters part of the neighborhood team. Truthfully, I thought the girls were passing around the number for the Department of Children and Family Services and planning a class action abuse call of some sort.

The opponents weren’t just rough, they were rude as hell. I swear one tried to spit on one of our girls and only caught herself when her father said, “Samantha! Heel!”

After our most recent lost, poor Babygirl flung herself into the car and bawled her eyes out all the way home. I think her brother shed a tear for her as well.

Both kids stalked upstairs when we got home. I sat down with my wife, who’d had class that morning and missed the latest bloodbath.

“I don’t think this was a good idea,” I started.

“It’ll be over soon. The season is half done.”

“Not if you count the playoffs.”

My wife shook her head. “I’m not. You shouldn’t either. We are in no danger of making it to the playoffs.”

“True.”

We sat in silence for a while. She was about to ask me something when I heard voices through my heating grill. I assumed my normal position.

“What are you doing?”

“Listening!”

“When are you going to respect their privacy?”

“Honey, the day they write a mortgage check, Daddy will give them all the privacy he thinks they should have in his house. Shhh!”

“…I need your help.”

“Not sure I can help, Sis. Hard work only accounts for so much in winning…And let's face it...ya'll stink on ice.”

“It’s not the losing that bothers me,” she said slowly. “It’s this getting punked every week. I can lose with no problem. Nobody said I’d go pro with this silliness. I won’t have a bunch of people bully me. I don’t like how my team isn’t getting their respect. I don’t want us to win…I just want us to not be treated so badly.”

“Really? Tell me the truth.”

“I want them to have to win harder. I want them…”

“I understand. You want to be like Saint Moses, The Black .” I could hear the pain in Scooter’s voice.

I shuddered. St. Moses the Black was a small school from a rough town in our area. Their athletic skills, from football to basketball to baseball, were nil. They had bad equipment and old, loud uniforms, and I swear half of their coaches resided in halfway houses.

The kids had heart, though. What they lacked in ability, they made up for in spirit. They regularly won a game or two by forfeit every season, but they were the most feared in the Catholic League.

St. Marcus the Black was the junior varsity equivalent of the 1989 Detroit Pistons. A team that even if you beat them, you came out so banged up you wondered if it was really a win. They didn’t take cheap shots. The team had too much honor for that. They just played hard, every game, every down, and literally took to heart the term “contact sport”. They got their respect as well. Our starters dreaded playing St. Moses, and with good reason. Your only indication of victory would be on the scoreboard. Those boys lost damn near every game but left the field each week with their heads held high.

“Done.”

“Yay! Thanks! Oh, it’s gonna be…”

“HARD. It’s gonna be hard. “

“How so?”

“There are some conditions.”

I could see her little eyebrow cock and her face contort.

“WHAT conditions?”

“For starters…you do what I say. I don’t care how stupid it sounds. I don’t care what your coach says. He wants to win. You want respect. You gotta get what I’m teaching before you can get what he wishes for.”

“OK.”

“And frankly, I’m tired of the name ‘Scoompi’…”

“Waiiit a minute…I don’t LIKE being called Aliwhosis…”

“I’ll call you something else…not your full name. But my sister is no Scoompi. Not to me. You want my help, you cease to be Scoompi or any derivation thereof to me…”

“Deal.”

“And you have to bury the hatchet with Sister Mary Tamika.”

“No.”

“You want my help?”

“Not that bad. I’ll suffer through the rest of the season.”

“Why?”

“Deal breaker, Big Brother. The other stuff, I’ll bite the bullet. Me and Big Booty? Got nothing to do with you.”

Pause.

“You hate her that much?”

“This isn’t about hate,” Scoompi said quietly. “You wouldn’t understand. You don’t have a nemesis. I need mine.”

More silence.

“Okay,” Scooter capitulated. “But agree to at least tone it down with her. This getting kicked out of religion class and whatnot? Time spent in detention will take away from time you need to work with me.”

“Fair enough. FOR THE SEASON ONLY. After that, Big Booty is mine.”

“We start now. Sr. Mary Tamika. Sister. Sister MT. No more Big Booty…”

“For the season…that’s all I promise.”

Groan. “Deal. A team is more than one person. You got teammates feel the way you do?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“When do we start?”

“Right now. My helmet and pads are in Daddy’s trunk. Bring them in.”

I heard her trundle downstairs and I scooted away from the grating.

“What they say?” my wife hissed.

I shrugged my shoulders.

The next week, Scooter’s little sister, her body tilted to the side, lugged his football equipment to and from the car for practice. Once home and done with homework, I didn’t see them for hours. I could hear them in the field in back of our house, and once or twice I spied some other little girls out there. I avoided that field like the plague. Some geese and I had had a run in there several years back.

Scoompi dragged in daily, but she never complained, just hauled herself upstairs to wash her grubby little self and down to supper. Before bed, she made sure his uniform was clean and ready for the next day. One day I caught her cleaning both of their cleats. He supervised. “What are you doing?” I asked.

Scooter all but ignored me. Scoompi glared and muttered, “Paying dues.”

I walked off, hearing my son say “Dirty equipment is useless equipment.”

They lost that weekend, but it was…different. For the first time, they played a team about their size and weight. They took their loss with stoic dignity, although the other team held off on the really insulting behavior. There was something different, though. Babygirl’s walk changed slightly as she walked off the field. I couldn’t place it at first, until I saw Scooter and the defense strut off field later that afternoon at his own game.

“Is he walking like his sister?” my wife asked with concern.

“No,” I corrected. “She’s trying to walk like him.”

“Oh.”

K.O and a couple of the other guys on our football squad hung around our place after school the next week. Once or twice I heard little girls yowl in pain from the field, but I kept to myself, and the kids said nothing to me save “Can I stay for dinner?” “Are you still buying this generic orange juice” or my favorite, “Any ice? No cup. A rag is fine.”

The night before the next game, Scoompi asked her brother, “You got an old jersey?”

“I do. Why?”

“I wanna wear it under mine at my game tomorrow.”

“Too big.”

“You got something I can wear? For luck?”

I couldn’t see his face, but I could tell by the way he said, “Shukran, Allie!” that he was touched. I heard him rummaging around in his room.

“Here are my football socks, I wore them in the last game,” he said.

“Geez, did Mommy wash them? I want respect. I don’t wanna knock ‘em out! Ow! My arms are sore from all those pushups! Don’t do that!”

“Wait…Allie?”

“Yep?”

“Gimme your soccer socks. I’ll wear them under my regulars in my cleats.”

“OK.”

I guess we were doing something right as parents, because I went to bed that night quite proud.

Scoompi came downstairs the next morning in her uniform. Scooters socks were way too big, covering her shin guards and doubled over they were still up to her thighs, under her shorts. She stood solemnly while her mom did her pony tail at the back of her shirt.

“Let’s go,” she said quietly.

This was a repeat team, the Cujos, one of the worst offenders when it came to insults and ponytail pulling.

Our coach didn’t look defeated, he looked spooked, like a deer in the headlights. His wife was rubbing his shoulders and pumping him with sports drinks and pep talks, still he looked as if he really wanted to cry. The Cujo coach was on the sideline, laughing with his girls and their parents.

More than half of our girls had this strange look on their faces. It wasn’t fear. It reminded me of looks you saw in newsreels and old video of soldiers in combat. I realized it was the eight year old equivalent of the thousand yard stare.

The coach came over, shaking like a leaf.

“Look, girls, I know we just want to play our best, play hard, but look…” he stammered, “if it looks rough out there, look, just lay down. I don’t want any more of you getting hurt. Just lay down,” he lay on the ground, “and curl yourself into a little ball.” He assumed the fetal position. “Like this,” his voice came out muffled.

Some girls giggled. The rest kept up with their stare.

“OK, girls, on three…one two three Powder Puffs!”

I swear, as they took the field, he was biting his nails. Scoompi settled into the goal area.

The game started innocently enough. Our skills were no match for theirs. But when they came downfield and made the final kick, Babygirl grabbed the ball. She didn’t roll it back out, however. She threw it with all of her might at the kicker’s head.


It was like a reenactment of the Zapruder film. A head snapped back, then forward, and a body hit the ground. The whistle blew and all of the girls on the field took a knee. It took a couple of minutes for her to come around, and she didn’t leave the field under her own steam.

The opposing coach got mad, but the ref refused to believe the Powder Puffs had intentionally hurt anyone. They’d been getting beat up all season. I noticed a couple of other girls had joined our thousand yard stare club.

We got the ball and as a Cujo defender stole it, she was body crushed between two flying third graders on our team. She didn’t go down, but the whistle blew and the girls took a knee again as she howled and was led off the field. The coach was angry again, but it just looked like a typical mix up on the soccer field.

So it continued. The Cujos scored a goal, only to have Scoompi again hurl the ball, this time at the head of the girl who was their defensive star. Not the scorer. She barely ducked but it took out their second best scorer. Later, there was a pileup of girls when they all went down, and I saw little elbows flying, but it would be hard to swear as to whose.

Soon, I realized that the girls spent more than half of the game taking a knee. The thousand yard stare was in full effect, with every girl on the team giving to the Cujos, player, coach and parents alike. The fact that our coach kept fretting like his pants were wet probably worked in our favor in terms of penalties called.

When the game ended, 1-0, Cujos, our girls were still staring. Our coach almost had a conniption. Cujo parents were taking an assortment of crying, bleeding and otherwise dazed little girls home. And Scoompi and her teammates held her head high. Parents looked like they wanted to say something, but we had as many fathers as they did, and our mothers, my wife included, turned a blind eye to whatever was happening.

“Girls! We need to practice! We’re losing the fundamentals! Girls?” Fathers on our team looked at him with disgust. The girls stared ahead.

The next weekend was the Squash cup, this multi game tournament held at the park. We were there by 8am for the first of three games. Luckily, we’d be done by noon. There was a Harper Lee conference at the university I wanted to attend.

The girls stalked on the field again, creepy thousand yard stares in full effect.

“Now girls,” said the coach, “we’re into sportsmanship…it’s not how we win or lose…”

They eyed him like he had two heads.

“We gotta go to work,” Scoompi said when he finished yammering.

The initial kick off was innocent enough. Again.

That was it.

The elbows, the body blows. I saw a log roll at one point.

There was no score. The other team left crying. Parents were glaring, and the Powder Puffs were pushing that steely glare.

The second game was against the Cyclones, the team that pulled out girls’ shirt ponytails in the past.

The Cyclones gave like they got, and by halftime we had a couple split lips and each team had a player carried off field in a stretcher. I bought a Gatorade and walked over to our side, where our coach was looking miffed and Scoompi was holding court.

“We got this,” she said. “We can take them. We are scoreless, but we got this. We are all in. Cmon, bring it in.”

It was like attending a séance. The coach was back to biting his fingernails. The whistle blew.

We dribbled up field, clustered as usual. The Cyclones attempted to pick us apart, but our girls remained bunched up, with the ball in the middle. The Cyclones tried to penetrate but got stiff armed. It was weird, but the biggest girl on our team broke out with the ball, chugged up field and kicked hard for the goal.

The Cyclone goalie grabbed the ball and launched it at our forward’s head. The impact knocked the spit out of her. She fell.

Then she got up, charged the goal and began pummeling the goalie with fists and feet. When she went down and one of her teammates tried to help her, my little girl flung herself at the other player. “Take a knee!” she hollered. Parents gasped. Fathers cheered. Scooter’s jaw dropped. Whistles blew. The teams took a knee, all eyes on my child.

“Yeah, this is really helping to calm that aggressive personality,” I said to my wife.

“Shut up.”

Our forward was ejected from the game. In the first display of emotion in three games, our girls cheered. Their goalie was replaced by a girl Scoompi’s size, who trembled from the moment she stood in the net.

We scored. The new goalie jumped out of the ball’s way like it was a charging rhino.

The game ended, and our girls again cheered. Then two men in jackets bearing the legend “Homewood Soccer League” came over, spoke to the refs, and then summoned each coach. When they were done, one held a megaphone to his lips.
“After reviewing the last two games today, league authorities have agreed to suspend the Powder Puffs for unsportsman like conduct from this Squash Cup. The victory still stands; however, the girls will forfeit the next game against the Pterodactyls. Get a grip on your kids people.” He glared at our side and stalked off.

“Well, I guess that’s that,” I said, happy to be leaving early. As my wife stood, I folded our camp chairs. Scooter was grinning ear to ear. Scoompi ran over to him.

“You did it Allie!”

“She did what?” my wife snapped. “Got disqualified?”

“They won, Mama,” Scooter said patiently. “They earned it. They went out there and played and did what it took to win.”

“I’m proud of you,” I said, scooping her up. She wriggled and I put her down.

“You’re proud of her? Because they won? Is that what it’s about? Winning at all costs? What are we teaching our kids?”

“MaaaMuh?”

“Yes, Alexandra?”

“I don’t care that we won. This wasn’t about that.” She looked up; her little face had a peaceful look, under all that grime.

“Then what, pray tell, was the big deal?”

One of the Pterodactyls walked up and fist bumped with Scoompi. “Sorry we didn’t get to play ya’ll. Maybe next year. Ya’ll got heart. Looking forward to it. Later, Scoomp…” she walked off.

“Nothing Mama. Just that I learned that nobody gives you anything. You gotta go out and get it. That is especially the case with respect.”

She hugged her mom’s leg and punched me. “C’mon, Atticus. Let’s go home. You too, Jem.”

She did her dance all the way to the car.