Where Parents Care, But Not Too Much
By Neal Pollack
Of all the things I’ve done wrong as a father – according to several non-reputable online gossip sites, the list is legion – denying my son a decent physical education isn’t one of them. This has been mostly because we got lucky by moving to the Very Special Neighborhood Where Parents Care, But Not Too Much. But at least I’ve been organized enough to get Elijah on the lists.
Our first break happened when the decaying gym at Elijah’s preschool transformed overnight into a spunky gymnastics center, and Elijah started taking classes from Coach Mike, a kind, subtle disciplinarian with mad skills who’s patiently watched my son evolve from an uncoordinated baby to a semi-coordinated boy. Then one of the moms from the preschool hired Coach Andy, a freelancer with a copious supply of athletic equipment, to come to Riverside Park every Friday and teach the Very Special Children about sports. Elijah learned the basics of baseball, soccer, basketball, and flag football, minus the usual bullshit trappings of screaming parents and forced marches to crappy pizza joints. Coach Andy even introduced the kids to dodgeball without traumatizing results.
Add to this mix the excellent swim teachers at the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center – for whose guidance I’ve paid out the nose and the ass – and Mr. Wenger, the groovy Austrian-born P.E. teacher at Elijah’s kindergarten who hand-built a stegel, an effectively malleable piece of wooden Euro-style gym equipment, and, so far, Elijah doesn’t fear athletic activity. That’s changing, though, because now I’ve enrolled him in soccer. Suspicious clouds of incompetent weirdness have begun to darken our youth-sports paradise.
I decided to not put Elijah in our neighborhood soccer league, with practice fields and games a five-minute drive from our house, because the dad of one of his kindergarten classmates was talking up the American Youth Soccer Organization in Glendale. In the neighborhood rec league, the dad said, it was just a bunch of kids kicking the ball around. But in AYSO, they had drills, they had equipment, they had actual soccer instruction. Well, I thought, that’s what Elijah needs, a real soccer coach, who can teach him the real principles of soccer, a game favored by Brazilian men who get laid a lot.
Because of my perseverance and caring, I got Elijah one of the final two spots in the AYSO Glendale chapter’s five-year-old league. The AYSO has about 100 different teams in seemingly infinite age brackets, so there’s a lot of competition for park space. Unfortunately, we were assigned to a park in La Crescenta. As I hauled Elijah up there for his first practice, past where the 2 turns into the 210, I thought to myself, “So this is where the mountains are.”
Our coach had on a light-brown T-shirt that bore the image of Bob Marley, under which was written the word REEF. Now, I appreciate that a grownup would wear such a shirt in public, but really, given that I live in Los Feliz, I shouldn’t have to drive half an hour to meet one of them, not to mention pay 100 bucks plus the cost of cleats, shin-guards, and a neon-green soccer ball.
By the end of practice, we learned that the team would be called, uninterestingly, the Sharks. Every kid had chosen a name and Coach Reef had pulled one out of a hat. Elijah wanted his team to be called the Liopleurodons, which would have been awesome, certainly way better than Indiana Jones, which was another kid’s choice. In any case, our first practice went OK, and Elijah didn’t complain, but I suspect that’s because I took him out for a tasty bowl of pho when it was over.
Last Tuesday, the team had its fourth practice. We were now called the Bandits because the Sharks had already been taken, forcing Coach Reef to make an executive decision. In general, things had devolved considerably. Practice, we were informed, would be on Monday from now on. Coach Reef spent the first 20 minutes explaining that it wasn’t his fault, as the order had come down from the league office.
Meanwhile, the seven kids who’d shown up were told to work on “dribbling.” One of them decided to lie down inside the net. About five minutes in, Elijah was sitting on a ball with his green-and-gold jersey over his face. Then, we started scrimmaging, because, Coach Reef said, “all the kids want to do is play games anyway.” Elijah, terrified that the other team was going to score, ran back toward his goal every time someone kicked the ball.
“Get out of my way!” said another kid.
“I will not, you idiot!” said Elijah.
Then they were shoving each other, and the other kid was screaming, “HE CALLED ME AN IDIOT!”
Coach Reef broke it up, saying, “Hey, we’re all friends.”
“He’s not my friend!” Elijah said.
True enough, but I still had to pull my son aside and tell him it wasn’t OK to call one of his teammates an idiot. After a brief, lethargic drill during which the boys learned how to throw the ball in from out of bounds, overhand, Coach Reef called the boys over, told them again that they were all friends, and everyone limply chanted “Bandits!” before we broke. Their first game was in 10 days, and they didn’t seem ready.
In the parking lot, Elijah said, “I played better than ever before, didn’t I, daddy?”
“You played great,” I said. But in reality, he hadn’t really played at all, just ran around in an unfocused, disorganized way while another kid stood in the middle of the field and shouted “ENOUGH WITH ALL THE KICKING!”
On the way home, I listened to the ninth inning of a pathetic 2-1 Dodgers loss to the Washington Nationals, the worst team in baseball, where the supposedly playoff-contending Blue, those maudlin chokers, had left 10 men on base and hit into four double plays. At least my kid is five years old, with a beginning soccer coach. What’s the Dodgers’ excuse?
Published: 09/03/2008
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