Mehhhhhh'mries.....

[ceebeegee]

This weekend was chock full of soccer goodness. At the last minute I decided to sign up for a pickup game in the Bronx and it ended up with a decent amount of players--by the end it was 7 on 7 or 8 on 8, and the field was almost full field (which I love). I scored twice and assisted on a beautiful goal--I passed it square to a guy who was standing in front of the goal with a couple of defenders between him and the goal. He did a kind of forward bicycle kick--kind of dove forward and flipped up his leg in back, kicked the ball over his head and it went in. As I told him "that is some World Cup shit!" I've played with this group before but we never had this many people--it was nice. And free! And no obnoxious chauvinists.

Ryan came over and I made an apple pie in front of him. And it was guuuuuuuuud. We each had a piece of warm pie (complete with requisite pie jokes) with some Southern Tier Pumking Ale (he'd never had any--I introduced him to The Crack That Is Pumking Ale. Best pumpkin ale, bar none. It legit tastes like liquid, alcoholic pumpkin pie).

And Sunday my league team had a game. We've switched leagues and are getting HAMMERED--there are some really good teams in this league and they're all spanking us. Until yesterday I think we'd scored--all season--only 4 goals. (Of which one was mine :) Finally yesterday we played like I know we can--we passed and set up plays and took our time--and we won, 3-1, a nice decisive victory! (And yes, I scored :) The second league season in a row I've scored two goals. (It's harder to score in league games--the teams tend to be better and they have dedicated goalies. Pickup games are easier to score.) I'm especially proud of Zachary, our captain, who just does not like passing that much--he actually set up the goal I scored. We were all super happy afterwards.

The other team was nice--they played kind of rough but I do think it was just the way they played and not because they were dicks. I was chatting here and there with one of their defenders, a girl with an accent. I asked her "are you English?" and she said yes. I said give me a couple of minutes and I might be able to tell from which region. I told her I was an actor practicing my RP, having just watched The King's Speech (again). She said she knew I as an actor since I knew what RP was and I said "yes, I listen to George VI's speeches and then I read Harry Potter out loud since that was written by an English person." She said I'd pick up some good slang that way as well.

And on of their guys paid me a compliment, saying he'd never seen anyone who attacked as much as I did. I said well, that's pretty much the sum of my skill set--I attack! I shoot again and again. Eventually one's gonna go in--as it did! (Although I was kind-of kidding to make a joke and not to sound like a dick--I do have some skills as a player. But my main asset is that I am always on the attack which is why I'm kind of wasted as a defender!)

This made me think of when I lived in New Hampshire with my Dad, 7th through 9th grades. The high school there was a regional HS, very large student body and quite a sports powerhouse. The gym was literally wallpapered with sports banners--for the past 4 years alone, they had been state football champions. It was assumed every year we would win district and regional titles in nearly every sport, and girls' soccer was one of them. When I started playing soccer there I was on the JV team and I stood out--in fact I was the lead scorer, and scored 2-3 goals in many games. My coach called me "Green, Green, the Scoring Machine" (a nickname I LOVED, as you can imagine!). I did so well in fact, that I was bumped up to the varsity team. This was a huge honor (it was rare for freshman to make the varsity team, although I certainly wasn't the only one) but mainly what I did was warm the bench during the varsity games and get game time during the JV games. This was fine--as long as I played I was happy, and of course I wasn't as good as the older players and didn't expect to get that much varsity game time. But I did practice with the varsity team and hence had to deal with our coach, Mr. Hanchett.

I don't know if the thinking has evolved since then--this was in the '80s--but I have to say, if my daughter had a coach like Hanchett, I would yank her off the team. To be plain-spoken, he was awful to us--borderline abusive, really. He never actually hit any of us (that I know of) but he screamed at us constantly, levied many personal insults and reveled in our humiliation. Think Kreese from The Karate Kid--he really was just like that. One incident I remember was when he singled me out during a practice. Our standard forward formation was 5 across but not straight across--we had to stagger the line so we could pass forward and advance. For some reason during a run our line had flattened out and he was screaming at us "YOU'RE FLAT, THE FORWARDS ARE FLAT, GODDAMMIT, THAT LOOKS HORRIBLE!" Then he looks at me and yells "Girls aren't supposed to be flat, right, Green? Does that embarrass you?!" I glared at him and said "NO." Seriously, dude, I have 3 brothers, is that the best you can do?! And does it make you feel better to pick on a freshman, a girl literally half your size? But the thing is, you can't really teach girls that way. (I hate to say just girls--I don't think boys should be coached that way either, but I've never coached boys so I'm less sure of how they'd react.) Girls don't respond well to that kind of humiliation--it didn't make us work harder, it just made us hate practice, and hate him. The worst was when members of the opposing teams--the girls we were playing against--would give us these incredulous looks and mutter "how can you play with that going on?" I remember shrugging and saying briskly "we all hate him." But--we loved the game. We wanted to play, and just kind of endured his presence.

Then it got even weirder when he started *favoring* me--but only in his creepy "I like you so I'm going to single you out" way. I remember standing in the milk line and him coming up to me, slapping 20 cents into my hand--he literally grabbed my wrist, turned it up, and slapped down the money--and saying "two milks" and walking away. I remember just staring at the money, like "WTF, now I gotta deal with THIS shit?! God, I thought I only had to put up with him at practice!" And I remember my friend staring at me aghast, like WHY are you going along with this?! And I shrugged and said he'll take it out on me in practice--it's just easier this way. I remember him telling me how my greatest strength as an athlete was my hustle--that I never gave up, that I was always going for that goal. (Naturally of course he said it in this sneering, let-me-put-you-in-your-place tone.)

We went to States that year and finished second--a great disappointment to us, since we'd beaten Central twice during the regular season. I still have the program with everyone's names and jersey numbers and positions, and our second place medals (I sewed it to my letter on my letterman's jacket. Oh, I am *such* a jock :) And Hanchett put me into the game toward the end--and believe me, he didn't play everyone that game. On the other hand I distinctly remember he did it to humiliate another player, a junior, whom he didn't think was hustling enough. *Sigh*.

Then it really got weird toward the end of the year. I'd decided I was going back to Virginia to live with my Mom again, so I'd be leaving this school obviously. Hanchett taught history, and one of my sophomore friends who had class with me told me he'd been talking about me in history. I was like--are you kidding me? She said he was talking about what a shame it was that I was moving--that I was a gifted athlete and a great soccer player and an asset to the team. My jaw--literally--dropped open. I honestly had no idea how to process that because he was SUCH a dick to us. Like--dude, you couldn't say that TO ME? To my face? Oh, I had all the adolescent feelz.

A couple of years late--I think it was the summer before my junior or senior year--when I was visiting my dad for the summer, I heard somehow (maybe I ran into a former teammate in town) that Mr. Hanchett was doing summer soccer--informal scrimmages with other schools before practice actually started in August. I showed up at the pickup spot and ended up riding with Hanchett and two freshmen. Hanchett was actually--civil! Nice, even! And now that I was beyond his reach, I took full advantage and was quite cheeky to him, saying things like "now that my coach isn't screaming at me, I'm actually enjoying the game." He didn't seem to mind at all. And I clearly remember the two freshmen in the back giving me these looks of horror, like how do you DARE? Afterwards they were grilling me, asking me "aren't you scared of him?!" I said "Nope. Not anymore" ;)