"Happy Days"

Over the holidays, the young men that I coached for seven years on a club soccer team—our youngest son included—organized a reunion. Cathy and I hadn’t seen most of them for the past 15 years and for more than two hours we reminisced and laughed about one of the more positive experiences in their growing up years.

Their favorite memory was a championship victory over their perennial nemesis—whom they had never defeated. They won that overtime game on a long throw-in that was headed in the goal by a boy who had just entered the game. We remembered the tears of the losers--they were inexperienced losers! One of their parents told me after the game that he thought the loss was good for that team because of their inflating ego.

But there were painful memories also. They remembered the tournament they were swindled out of a spot in a championship game by a coach who secretly lobbied tournament officials to bend the rules in his team’s favor. And one of the young men agonized over being tossed out of a game for leveling a referee he had not seen because he was chasing a high kick. The referee thought he intentionally bowled him over.

Another young man remembered joining our team after playing for a ragtag team in a nearby city. His former team seldom won and each boy on that team had a lone jersey for a uniform. He was overjoyed when he came to his first tournament with us and received two full uniforms plus warm-ups. He thought he had arrived in the big leagues!

But many of the memories had little to do with soccer and a lot to do with relationships. They remembered staying at a mountain cabin during one tournament. The cabin sat by a raging creek that one of the boys fell in and another one yanked him out after he was sucked under. Had he saved him from drowning? We will never know. And there were other less dramatic memories:

• They remembered—and sang!—a popular song that they played again and again during pre-game warm-ups.
• They laughed at the memory of an agitated goalkeeper for another team who was dubbed “psycho goalie”.
• I recalled a boy throwing up in an elevator after boasting about how much pizza he could eat!
• Several remembered one boy sliding through a muddy puddle at the end of the game, just for the fun sliding through a muddy puddle—and then being denied access to his car until he stripped down.

When sports are dominated by news about drugs, domestic violence, greed, and immorality, it is good to remember that sports can be a source of great joy for many children.