I started in a way I imagine so many others started; in second grade, signed up for the local rec. league. I was the smallest kid on the team, never played before. So obviously (?) the coach decided, I should be the goalkeeper. I didn’t have gloves, my ‘keeper jersey a pinny or an old t-shirt that had to be knotted at the waist to avoid being tripped over during the game. And I loved every minute of it. Now, I don’t know if it was an actual ‘love of the game’ or if it was the prospect of being able to do something on a weekly basis that scared the crap out of my mother that my seven year old self loved. But it didn’t matter, I was hooked. We’d practice once a week, have a game on Saturday, repeat. Fall soccer, spring soccer.
As the seasons went on, my position changed; sweeper, stopper, fullback, midfield. “You want me to play center halfback?! That’s like, all over the field!” I remember the first time I was able to run a full lap around the field. The first time I thought ‘maybe I CAN play center halfback.’ I tried out for traveling teams, made it, got cut, went back to rec., repeat. Switched to forward, ‘trained’ in my backyard with my neighbor, doing sprinting drills and trying to learn scissors and Maradonas and setting up cones for dribbling drills. I played on teams so bad I could have a five goal game and we’d end up on the wrong end of a 10-6 decision and on teams good enough to bring home first place trophies and go undefeated.
I played in middle school, on a 30-plus person squad, a team so big that we didn’t all have matching uniforms, looking very ‘blue & gold jerseys: a retrospective’ whenever we arrived at a game. I played in high school, first on a freshman team that went through some five or six or seven or who knows how many coaches, often traveling to away games with some random teacher that someone had somehow convinced to be our chaperone. Two years on JV, understudies to a varsity squad that would leave us a legacy of state and county championships and undefeated and one-loss seasons and national rankings. Traveling on a bus from New Jersey to Long Island so the varsity team, then ranked #2 nationally, could take on the #1 (our JV team got beat, but the varsity team, for the record, won). In the spring we had a U-18 team that won tournaments despite never practicing, was nearly unstoppable when the whole team actually showed up to games, and managed to hold our own when only ten players made it to the away games.
Senior year I was on varsity, mostly sitting the bench through a season where we were expected to, well, suck. Having graduated the last of the state championship squads the year before, no one expected us to go anywhere. And there would be no national rankings, no county or state championships, but we did better than expected, winning games no one picked us to win, ending the season with a player or two named to all state or county first or second teams. Managing to not damage too badly the reputation of a school that had been something of a girl’s soccer powerhouse.
But as much as soccer was the organized game of rec. teams and traveling teams and then the ultra-organized game of high school, it was also something else. It was summer nights playing in the street, the goals trash cans or a rock or two frisbees or just a certain spot on the curb. Stopping only for the occasional car on our suburban street. There was no out-of-bounds, or if there was, it was loosely enforced. We got more than a few balls lodged in trees through overzealous shots (the street name was after all, Forest) and a few more as we tried to use them to knock the first ball back to earth, a technique that usually resulted in so many showers of leaves and acorns before any success. Just beyond the goals in both directions, the street went downhill, leading to more than a few full-on sprints, chasing the size 4 as gained speed and changed direction as it hit pebbles, neighbors out for a walk, a bike left outside. Leaving us praying for a parked car to stop its trajectory. People got older, moved away, got over it. Our games faded. And then after school or after dinner or whenever it was hours in the driveway, a boom-box in the garage playing the latest mix-tape I’d made, juggling. Sometimes a neighbor would come by, back and forth, juggling.
Soccer had borders for me though. Clearly defined by the end of the street, or the county lines, or the “away” column on the schedule, or the age group I was in. I knew it existed outside these borders, but I’d never seen it. Not really. In 1994, as the World Cup was coming to the US, I wrote a letter to Sports Illustrated for Kids. It had something to do with the fact that I “live[d] kind of near Giants Stadium and how could I find out about more about the World Cup?” I hung a poster of Cobi Jones and Alexi Lalas on my wall, next to pictures of the NJ Devils, who just months earlier had broken my heart, losing to the Rangers in the ’94 Stanley Cup playoffs and the NY Mets, who had broken my heart since I was four. We never made it to a World Cup game at Giants Stadium, despite the fact that SI for Kids printed my letter, informing me and the rest of the loyal readership how we might get tickets to the upcoming World Cup (it’s in the issue with Clyde “The Glide” Drexler flying across the cover in his Portland Trailblazers jersey, you know, if you happen to have some weird Sports Illustrated for Kids archive). And thus, soccer remained largely invisible outside my bedroom and my New Jersey town and the “away” column of the schedule.
I had no idea, about Mia Hamm or Kristine Lilly or any of that. Didn’t know there was a Women’s World Cup. As far as I was concerned, a championship meant a trophy and a pizza party at the local Pizza Hut. Second place meant a smaller trophy and maybe we went to Joe’s Pizza or Frank’s Pizzeria for a slice instead. I had a poster of Michelle Akers hanging in my room, too, but it had no context. As far as I knew, somewhere, there was this one woman with crazy hair that played soccer. In 1996, as the US Women were advancing through the group stages of the Olympics, I was also in Atlanta, taking in baseball and volleyball and basketball on a summer camp trip. As Hamm and Foudy and Lilly were making their way towards Olympic gold, I was wandering around Atlanta, lost, with a group of friends, desperately trying to find any of the other 100 people we’d come to Atlanta with and somehow become separated from. As the US Women were beating Norway in the semi-finals, I was, reunited with the group, on a bus stopped somewhere in one of the Carolinas, midway through a 24 hour journey back to the Garden State. And as the US Women were winning gold, we were already off on the next ‘teen travel’ trip, more likely than not still in trouble for our impromptu sightseeing journey in Atlanta the week before.
1999. I knew then that it existed. Michelle Akers and Cobi Jones and Alexi Lalas had been joined on my wall by Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy. I saw them on TV. Watched as they made their way into the World Cup final. July 10th. Three days before my 17 birthday. Three days before I had my driver’s license. Three days before I could drive that red Volkswagen without my dad in the passenger seat. Two months before my senior year of high school. Six weeks before double sessions began for my final season of soccer. I watched as full time expired. Glued to the 13″ TV in my room as the extra time went by without a goal. On the edge of my seat through the PKs. Score. Score. Score. Score. Score. SAVE! Score. Score. Score. SCORE! Brandi Chastain pulls off her jersey and the US Women win the World Cup. You know the story. The 90,000-plus people at the Rose Bowl go crazy. I’m 3,000 miles away in my bedroom in New Jersey. But in that moment, I’m there. And Women’s Soccer. It’s here. It’s a thing. It’s real. Outside of my street and my town and the “away” column on the schedule.
But there’s a another thing at play. As far as I am from the Rose Bowl geographically and physically, I’m even further away in my life. Soccer had been something I’d loved. Still loved. But it was at odds with everything else. With the social constraints of school and life and what clique you’re in and all the bullshit that comes with high school that they don’t tell you about when you make your course schedule. As Michelle Akers had been joined by Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy on my wall, she’d also been joined by Kurt Cobain, The Ramones, Less Than Jake, Third Eye Blind, NoFx, Rancid, Henry Rollins. The soccer trophies on my bookshelf joined by books on Joan Miro, copies of Rolling Stone and Spin and Punk Planet. All those articles about traveling team victories that had been cut out of the paper and placed in a folder in a drawer now sat alongside Poland Spring bottles filled with gin and vodka and whatever other liquors we’d managed to steal from my parents, cigarettes we’d convinced people to buy for us, half-smoked joints and homemade bongs. My bulletin board had our preseason soccer schedule pinned on it. But there’s also the fliers for two or three local punk shows pinned there. Hand drawn advertisements for the next show at the local VFW hall. Five dollars, six bands! The postcard for the Pennywise, All, Strung Out show at Roseland. Ticket stubs from that show. From an Offspring concert. There are plans to be made for Warped Tour. Should we go to Asbury Park or Randall’s Island? Did you get the newest Punk-O-Rama CD yet?
I’m 3,000 miles away from the Rose Bowl, and every day I’m getting further away. Soccer is there. It’s always been there. And for the rest of the country, it is, in that moment, the biggest thing on the planet. For me, it’s getting smaller. Slipping away. I watch the team celebrate. And in my room it means something to me. A part of my life, an extension of me. But as soon as I step outside, as soon as I get my license three days later and I’m staying out until 3 am and smoking a joint in the attic of a friend’s house, I have to forget it. These people, in this attic, they are probably the only people in thewholefuckingworld that didn’t watch the game.
This is my double life. Once I have my license I can drive myself down to the lake to train for the upcoming season. Grab my Walkman and the mix-tape and go. I grudgingly run five or six laps around the half-mile track. I smoke a cigarette on the way there and on the way back. I go home and shower and then go out. Probably we went to the diner. Cheese fries. Mozzarella cheese. We sit there for hours and smoke cigarettes and eat our cheese fries. I’m not worried that I’ll see one of my teammates, that someone will catch me smoking. These aren’t ‘their people.’ This is not what they do.
My senior year starts with my Grandmother dying. The Rose Bowl is getting smaller. I’m riding the bus back from some ridiculous tri-scrimmage all the way in fucking South Jersey while the rest of my family is sitting Shiva. I’m stuck on this team with these girls that I hate. And they hate me. At my school, the soccer girls are the popular girls. The soccer girls and the field hockey girls and a few cheerleaders. At lunch they sit with the football players and the guys that run cross-country and of course, the soccer guys. My lunch table is actually two or three tables, the people interchangeable, some bizarre group of punks and rave kids and a few members of the color guard and the loud girl and people who think they’re in ‘The Fast and the Furious’ before there was a ‘The Fast and the Furious’ and art students and the people who just never quite made it into the popular crowd and the kids in the ‘alternative school’ program. We’re the ones throwing food. Getting in shouting matches. We sit on the opposite side of the cafeteria. Did you get hit in the head with a balled up hamburger wrapper? It almost certainly came from our table. This isn’t even my lunch period. I’m supposed to be in Study Hall, but I’ve been lying to the teacher, telling her I’m going to get extra help in math, and then showing her a pass the next day. The teacher who helped me doesn’t exist. I’ve been forging the signature. The Rose Bowl is getting further away. During photo class we go smoke cigarettes in the woods. Whenever we have a soccer game, we all have to dress alike. Dress up, or wear one of our practice jerseys, or our warm-ups, or our vests, or whatever. It’s always a shock when I show up to school like that. “You play…soccer?” People are confused. These aren’t my people. You can’t go to a punk show on Sunday and be in the starting XI on Monday. I can barely see the Rose Bowl.
My senior year they decide to hold a pep rally as the fall sports season is set to begin. My friends decide there’s no way we’re staying. “Let’s go.” “I, uh, can’t” “Why?” “I’m in the Pep Rally.” There’s laughter. The same kind of laughter I get now when I order a burrito from the Mexican place across the street, and ask for it “sin carne.” Mocking laughter. The Rose Bowl’s just a tiny speck now. Around my friends I can’t shut up. At practice, I can’t talk. I sit by myself on the bus, listening the the Moon Ska Records compilation on my Disc-man. Trying to drown out the sing-along to Chumbawumba or whatever Z100’s playing. But I turn the volume down occasionally. Let the “I get knocked down, but I get up again” sneak in under the headphones. I’m still a part of this team. It still means something. I still know the Rose Bowl’s there, even if I can barely see it.
Our season ends. Soccer ends. Ten years. Just. Stops. My double life is over. I go down to the dock. It’s the kids from the ‘alternative school’ program and me. We drink 40’s and smoke pot and cigarettes. My teammates aren’t here. I’m relieved. They don’t do these things, would never hang out with these people. I don’t have teammates anymore. Goodbye, Rose Bowl.
At the end of the fall, I got invited to a party. A girl that I was friends with, one of those rare people that was able to transcend social groups. I go with my friend in his Mustang. Red. The front bumper will end up with a dent a few months later when he tries to drive to my house in a snowstorm and slides into a small tree. He’d be fine. But that hasn’t happened yet. We drive to the party and there’s a ton of people. We go around back, fill our red cups with whatever beer’s in the keg. I hear someone call my last name, which I’m referred to as more than I am my first. I know that voice. What. The. Fuck. You can’t be here. We’re not teammates anymore. I don’t have to see you. This part, this is my life. But there they are, their own red cups in hand. I light a cigarette. I don’t care. They light cigarettes. Suddenly we’re there, in some weird smoking section at the Rose Bowl, realizing we’ve been sitting next to each other the whole time.
They took a bunch of baloney. Even though we’d banned the use
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