Yesterday was our last soccer game of the fall season. I know for most of you, it would be way too cold to play soccer right now. But yesterday was one of the very few games that was even remotely tolerable for us. It is about 80 degrees and cloudy and our game was first thing in the morning so it was still cool and perfect.
Can I just say if I ever have to endure another season of soccer it will be too soon? I used to be the Soccer Mom Extraordinaire. But this season really sucked for me.
My oldest son was on a team the age group above his age. I didn’t realize it until it was too late or I would have insisted he play in his own age group. There is just such a significant difference in size, at a minimum, when it comes to 12-14 year old boys. Add to that the fact that our league sets its own rules that make it pretty impossible to compete with area leagues and the boys didn’t even come close to winning a game all season. They still played really hard and improved a lot. But by the end of the season, I was done. Some of those soccer parents were ridiculously competitive to the point of being hostile toward other children. I’ve heard of this but had never seen it myself until we moved down here. Screw that. This is recreational soccer, not travel (competitive) soccer! My kids play soccer for fun, not becuase they are out for blood. Add to that a significant drive every weekend becuase none of the other leagues would come play on our fields and it was just a negative experience for me. Of course my good-natured kid could have cared less and is still happy to play again in the spring. I can think of a whole lot of other ways to spend $300 though.
This was my youngest son’s first real season playing soccer. He played once two years ago but would not even leave the sidelines so that doesn’t really count, right? In fact he wouldn’t even leave my side until about six months ago so when he asked to play soccer I decided to enroll him in the local Fun Fair Positive soccer league. I had never heard of such a thing – basically its an all-inclusive soccer league where a lot of the crap that we experienced in the regular league this year is just not tolerated. I thought this would be a perfect introduction to soccer for my sensitive son. And I was right. But man, this league just takes this stuff TOO far.
For instance, parents are only allowed to say things that start with “Go”, “Great”, “Good” and “Nice” otherwise they can be fined and if they refuse to apologize, that fine is doubled.
That’s only the beginning though. There are also rules about how many goals an individual child is allowed to score in a given game. The idea is to encourage strong players to back off enough to allow weak players to get “ball time”. Good in theory, not so much in practice. We had one player who really came into his own and was absolutely crushed to the point of depression when he was basically punished for success. What’s fair to some is obviously unfair to others. There were all sorts of other strange rules about document handling, coaching and other things. And they had all these strange play rules that have no resemblence to real soccer, that bugged a lot of us parents. Plus there is the “no score” rule which goes so far as to suggest that if a child asks his parents what the score was that they have to lie, if they know, and say they have no idea. I understand that score should not be the emphasis but I’m not lying to my kid nor am I sending him the message that I wasn’t really watching or paying attention to the game. Kids aren’t sutpid. In our effort to be fair and encourage a fun positive experience, we should be careful that we aren’t undermining that goal with our very actions and words.
I have to say this league was incredibly organized – they could teach seminars to leagues worldwide on paper-pushing, alone! But the rules? TOO much! And at the end of the season, none of them really worked. The parents still screamed at their kids, the strong players still dominated the field and the weak players weren’t very motivated. The parents seemed, for the most part, frustrated. The volunteers (coachs, team manager – of which I was one – assistant coaches, etc) all seemed frustrated. I don’t know how many players will come back in the spring but I know for a fact that the coach, assistant and team manager of this particular team will not be volunteering in the spring again.