Bad weather, mean girls make for unlikely start for Columbus soccer season

I wish I had the guts of my soccer players.

Most of them had never played before I chased them down the hallway and begged them. It takes a lot of guts to learn a new sport in high school. That’s something one does in elementary or even middle school. But in high school, most kids have already chosen their pathways and are unwilling, too nervous, or too busy to try something new. And soccer is complicated and unfamiliar. That alone is a big deterrent.

But grabbing kids out of the hallway is a normal thing we coaches do at Jordan. Then we spend the first few weeks teaching the fundamentals and off we go into competition. Quite often our selection of new players turns out OK, and we are competitive. We can blame that on the tenacity and relentless spirit of our students.

Sometimes, though, competing with brand new players is an endearing challenge.

For our first soccer game this year, we lugged a bus full of rookies to Chattahoochee County. We warned the girls, “It’s going to be cold and rainy, so come prepared.” And it was. It’s been a long time since I’ve played or coached in such cold and wet conditions.

So, I donned my rubber boots, my waterproof rain coat. I layered up and had a nice umbrella. My girls had nothing, just their uniforms and some hoodies. No rain gear. No cold weather gear. Not even umbrellas. I gave the kids on the sideline my umbrella, and they huddled together, still freezing with bare arms and bare legs. Six girls under one umbrella was a sad sight to see.

And the girls out on the field were horrifically freezing. When they weren’t running around staying warm, they had their little arms to their chests, shivering. Their hair was soaked. Their clothes were soaked. It was just icky.

Rookie players don’t know that when coach says, “It’s going to be cold and wet,” she doesn’t mean just on the walk from the bus to the locker room. There is no warm, dry dugout on the sideline and certainly no time outs to get a break from the pouring rain. That was Scene 1 of coaching rookies — a scene that tugs a little at your heart.

The game of soccer can be brutal in other ways as well. Considered a contact sport, soccer can get a little rough. For rookies, stepping out onto the battle field of soccer is indeed a shock.

Scene 2 finds us at our second game. Several minutes into the first half, one of our novice players left the middle of the field and ran over to me. “That girl pushed me!” she proclaimed in shocking disgust. Overwhelmed, she simply had to tattle. That’s the endearing aspect of coaching new players — a certain innocence that makes a coach smile. I patted her shoulder and told her such things will happen and to ignore them, but on the inside I thought to myself, “Welcome to soccer.”

I guess I shared these little scenes because maybe you can glean something out of them like I did. From my players I learned that nothing — no tempests, no blows of aggression — should bring me down. Like my players, I need to play this game with relentless abandon and take the outcomes as initiation into something greater.

This story was originally published March 21, 2017 at 3:01 PM with the headline "Bad weather, mean girls make for unlikely start for Columbus soccer season."