Isabelle, our six-year-old, started soccer last week.
This is her first foray into team sports. Until now, her athletic activities have been largely solo affairs. You know, dancing, swimming, gymnastics, and such.
I say what I’m about to say with huge buckets of motherly love, but our Isabelle has not shown the greatest inclination toward athletic endeavors. No hints of prodigy. Despite the focused work of my husband – and his mountain biking fetish - we’re still on training wheels. We’re not quite swimming on our own. And I’ve sat in on her dancing classes, folks. We’re not exactly talking Black Swan. I see that the best part of the dance recital – for her - is the bit at the end where they all jump around wildly on the stage. Freestyle baby. Freestyle.
But we felt it was time to branch out. Let’s sweat. Let’s get dirty. It’s spring. Soccer season was starting. So soccer it was.
Taking her to the field for her first soccer practice, I could feel her trepidation. She knew no-one. She’d never played the game before. I’m not sure she even understood the concept. The concept of getting those shin pads on was hard enough.
I watched her listening to her coach in that first huddle. It’s an Under-8 team, and I’ll bet most of the girls have been playing for a few years. Many seemed to know each other already. As I watched, I felt something in my chest. I could feel a big surge of life experience coming. I got a whisper of that feeling that we’ve all had. When you start a new job. When you stand nervously at the start line of a race. You’re on the edge of something unfamiliar and you’re wondering what’s in store.
Then the girls started their practice. They did warm up sprints and stretches. Then they got into drills. Within minutes, Isabelle was tentatively kicking a ball around pylons. Her eyes were darting between the ball, her feet, her coach, and the other girls.
Within another few minutes, she stopped and burst into tears.
That feeling in my chest surged. I watched the assistant coach kneel down beside her. I don’t know what he said – this kind man who we’d just met - but they had a moment. Then he spent the next 10 or 15 minutes walking beside her, talking her through the drills. She seemed to listen intently. She nodded. She kept going. Every now and then she’d look over at me. I would smile and give her the thumbs up. I have never – ever - been more proud.
How cool is this girl?
Fast forward a week to her first game. She was cheering and singing from the sidelines with the other girls. She threw her arms in the air and high-fived her team-mates with every goal they scored. On her shifts, she diligently ran in the general direction of the ball. She didn’t score a goal. But she ran hard. She got a few kicks in. Some of them in the right direction. She smiled the whole time.
During the game, I felt something else: the nostalgia of lessons learned from the team sports of my childhood. Tube socks and Adidas bum hugger shorts aside, I remembered the sense of accomplishment and fun. The pride of being part of something. The satisfaction of running hard with purpose and meaning with a bunch of other people doing the same thing. The discovery of finding you can do it. There is joy in those moments. Pure joy.
Her team won 11-1 that day. In her breathless recap as we walked back to the car, I could see she felt the thrill of victory in a way she wouldn’t have felt before. It’s good to know that feeling as a kid - victory. I know more lessons will come soon enough about the crushing disappointment of defeat. We’ll worry about that another day.
So will Isabelle be a life-long soccer player? Will she develop mad skills and bend it like Beckham? Will she rip her shirt off in a World Cup moment in front of thousands of adoring fans?
I can see it now.
Who knows. But if she catches a glimpse of the joy of sports and the beauty of the team, then it’s all good. We’ll see where it goes from there.
