Winter (and Spring) of My Discontent

I just finished "coaching" a great group of 10 year-old girls to a 1-15 record in indoor soccer. It is a testament only to the ability of kids to put all troubles into the immediate past that any of them want to continue playing soccer, but they do.

So I am about to embark on being their spring soccer coach. I think that this group of girls is probably better suited to outdoor play (we are dreadfully slow), but I find out tonight that the fine folks at Kidsports have decided to "promote" the Pterodactyls into the "middle" group of U12 Girls. This means that my fifth grade girls will be taking on almost exclusively 6th grade teams. There will be teams that are dropping down from the upper level, because it spring and "no one" takes it seriously. Kidsports apparently thinks that spring soccer is just a time to screw around, as everyone knows only fall soccer matters.

Except of course, the girls. To put not too fine of a point on it, these girls, "my girls" are about to go out and get ritually slaughtered every weekend. The teams we play will be so much better than some of our girls as to almost make it criminal. The really heart-crushing thing about it for me is that while I will know we are out of our league and will lose every game, struggle to not get humiliated, hear the other teams openly making fun of us, they will not know it. They will go out before every game thinking, hoping they will win this one. And they will be crushed when they lose. Blessedly, they will get over it quickly, but they don't deserve the pain and disappointment they will undoubtedly feel after every game.

Except thinking on it, the really heart-crushing thing is that some of the girls are catching on and they are becoming cynical about it. They will tell the other girls and I will watch these girls, "my girls," lose some of their innocence. They will lose hope. They will lose belief. They will lose confidence. It will happen this spring. On my watch.