Rovers East v West: The Final
Rooting against your family: tricky
You have it so easy when you show up to cheer on your team. You haven’t a wrinkle in the sky, your voice hoarse with crazed fanaticism, other than your team’s potential defeat, which is simply a problem that’s part of the deal. Fandom is 50 percent disappointment and 50 percent elation. It’s all factored into the equation. The happy luxury for you, the fan, is that you know who your team is and that your allegiance is as clear as the team logo sitting in the middle of the cap on the top of your head.
But what if you didn’t know? What if clarity was something you were begging a wrinkled sky to bestow because — gasp — your team was playing itself?
I’ll tell you what: it’s not for the faint of heart. In fact, it’s meant for the darkest section of your heart, the part where your need for the win comes out of you at all costs. It’s a duel with your better nature, and you haven’t a choice but to spin around and face it.
You don’t want this.
But too bad
Sometimes this is what you get. I got it once. It came to my son’s soccer team, the Rovers, and we parents were forced to cheer on a game between our two Rovers teams, East and West, for a travel tournament championship. East was the top team, while West — the team my son was on — housed the second tier.
It wasn’t supposed to happen. No one wanted it to happen. Our coach tried to rescue her two teams from such a scenario with the tournament officials. But as the tournament progressed, the two teams moved closer to the moment when they’d face off for the top trophy.
Technically, my team wasn’t going to play itself. My soccer family was. The parents of the two teams worked soccer concessions together, moved between the teams together as our sons would play for one then the other, went to meetings, and sat along the edge of the practice field together. We traveled to tournaments and carpooled, sat in numerous fast-food joints, all with each other. Our coach, Dudley, had one rule: we were a family. We were all Rovers, together.
Sound decisions
So, when we stood there at the starting whistle of the final game that spring, East and West parents began to spectate in a way we’d never done before. Not one movement or word played out intuitively. They welled up within you only to meet the gatekeeper of your conscience: You can’t yell that out loud. That’s cheering against Nick!
Only for your son could you make a sound.
But: you could also cheer with no sound, interiorly, insidiously, and truthfully. And I did. I became vicious without anyone ever noticing, a human confection with a sugary polite coating, but filled with killer instinct — all for an eleven-year-old’s soccer game.
For example:
When Pete from East stole the ball from West and then dribbled down the sideline, my body language said, Everything’s cool.
But my mind said, Go West!! GO!!!! Get that little crapper!! GET HIM!! Ransack him!! That’s your ball, West!! Take it!! RUUUNNN!!!
[ahem]
Or, at long last, when we finally scored our first goal, I clapped modestly, as one would in such circumstances, nodding my head sweetly to both teams, Good job all you guys.
However, I was one big hot mess candy killer instinct inside: YEEEEEESSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!
A want, some moxie, and PKs
My primary memory of that game was how much I felt for those boys. They were doing something brand new on a public stage against their friends with the support of a torn coach — all as fifth graders. I remember how hard West played that day. I recall being a little surprised to see such intensity in their faces, such a clear want.
The game began gradually as an adolescent game can, but as a game against your fellow Rovers will; tentatively. Eventually, East perked up and began to storm our defensive end. The game sat there for a while, and then: goal!
East led 1–0.
It was to be expected. East had the better kids. But there was also a sad flutter of the heart for a West parent. It was to be expected.
But the West kids on the field told a different story. The goal sparked something in them. They flipped a switch to try to beat their soccer siblings. Perhaps this is the crux of competition — you bend toward the win no matter the opponent.
So, West went at it. They sucked it up — their lack of speed, their lesser ball skills — and they engaged with every ounce of grit they owned until: goal!
Tie game, 1–1.
The halftime huddle was a first. Both teams left the field to meet with their coach — together.
In the second half of the game, West won for defensive moxie, as the game was largely in their half of the field, but nobody was able to squeak a goal in. The win would be decided by penalty kicks.
The two teams lined their kickers onto the midfield. One by one the kicks went off toward goal. One went in for each team. Then at the very edge of the last shred of our fingernails, us parents bit down one more time. East’s last kicker stepped up to the line, set the ball down, backed away, paused, then rushed to kick . . . and . . .GOAL!
East, 3–2, for the win.
Afterward, we stopped for ice cream on our way home from the tournament. The Rovers family merged again, the boys goofing off as if an ordinary day. There was a sigh of relief that this was our last of that kind of face-off. We chalked it up to experience. Twelve years later the Rovers’ parents still get together, although with wine instead of ice cream. And we still get a chuckle out of that oddball game.
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For another take on a youth soccer game — a gripping story about a ‘fowl howl’, do not leave here without reading this:
For an interesting read on Patrick Mahomes’ high school baseball career, read this. It definitely makes you wonder ‘what if’.
