We enrolled my ten year old in soccer this year. It had been three years since he last played so I wasn't sure how he would do. At the u12 level things are a lot different than u8. It became obvious that Jacob had a lot to learn. It also became obvious, painfully at times, that he is nothing like me when it comes to sports.
Sure we share a lot of the same traits. He not fast, but quick. He has good foot skills combined with the ability to teach his body new techniques pretty fast. He isn't the biggest kid but doesn't seem to notice. Still, we are worlds apart when it comes to playing sports. The boy doesn't seem to have a competitive bone in his body.
His team, and especially his coach suck. Jacob, not the worst kid by far, sat the bench the most. He didn't seem to mind so I kept quiet as his team kept losing game after game. After getting beat 16 to nothing in their fist game I asked him if he was ok? He said he was and he was. And so it went with the rest of the season, they got beat, he had fun and he didn't seem to mind. IT DROVE ME NUTS!
So the last game of the year as I watched him play I was mentally making a list of things I saw him doing wrong. I was contemplating how to tell him without sounding like one of "those" parents. As his team was walking back to the bench, just before I opened my mouth, I saw the coach pull his son to the side and very aggressively tell him how bad he was playing. The kid assured his dad, his coach, that he was doing his best, to no avail. The kid finally just looked at the ground and quietly headed to the bench.
By this time I looked up and Jacob looked at me through the chain link fence, smiling.
"It's tied zero to zero," he said. "How am I doing?"
I paused and looked over at the coaches son sitting as far away from his dad as he could get.
"Your doing great," I said. "I'm very proud of you."
I was too because he had managed to teach me something about sports I always had a hard time remembering. It's suppose to be fun. He had a coach to point out his mistakes he just wanted his dad to enjoy watching him. A harder role to play than I ever imagined.
They ended up winning the game. Walking to the car with my arm around my son's shoulder I asked if he was happy to finally win a game? He said he was but, "I was wondering," he said "can I sit in the front seat of your car on the way home?" and just like that soccer season was behind us, just like it should be.
