Soccer
soccer
First Day of Soccer
The Boy played his first two games today: tied the first one.
And in the meantime, two idiots proved themselves to be such.
Victorious
Congratulations to our girls’ soccer team, who won the district championship tonight.
Several of my students are on the team, so I had to go watch this — not just our school to cheer but individual students I’ll see in class tomorrow and give high fives.
They went to extra time, scored at 0-0, and they won in the final minute of extra time. In a way, though, I feel awful about it: they didn’t win on a big strike to the corner of the goal. It was a goalie mistake, pure and simple. Almost a beginner’s mistake, I would say. The goal slumped down and began weeping. I felt awful for her: she’s going to feel the whole team did their part, and then she let them down. She’s going to relive the moment endlessly. She’s going to beat herself up over that for weeks. And the team will (and already did) huddle around her and cheer her up, tell her everything is fine — “We did the best we could!” But that won’t help. At least not for a while.
Final Soccer Game
Soccer Saturday
Thursday Evening
More forest cleared near the soccer complex, but soccer stayed the same.
Leaving the Faith
The post stood out immediately: I can relate, and so can K. Granted, I hadn’t been attending Mass as long as the gentleman in question, but I could see myself in the post:
“I am very lost & confused as to where all of this came from,” she admits, and I find myself wondering how this came about. Perhaps the husband had been on this long road of deconversion for years and simply kept it to himself because he didn’t want his wife to worry. Perhaps as the issues piled up in his head he was in some sort of denial. Perhaps he dropped hints, unsure how to begin the conversation outright, and she just didn’t pick up on them because they were so incongruous with everything she knew about him or because he, inexperienced with dropping such hints, was unable to do so in a sufficiently clear way. (That’s the double problem with dropping hints.) Whatever the case, from her perspective, it’s coming out of nowhere.
In responding to this, some people shared that they can relate. But at least a couple had me wondering if effective communication was actually taking place. One response declared that her son had become “a socialist.”
Perhaps he does not align with a socialist political position, but knowing conservatives of the 2020s, it could simply be that he’s now aligned himself with the Democratic party and the mother, true to Fox News talking points, simply labels him a socialist.
To that response, someone commiserated that “it’s absolutely awful what this world is doing today,” to which the original commenter replied that “it is getting scary.” She suggests it’s “this world,” which is American Christian-ese “the Satan-influenced, Satan-worshiping society we live in,” which in turn is simply the non-Christian segment of the population. And it’s getting “scary” because more and more people are realizing that they don’t need Christianity in their lives: church attendance is plummeting, especially among those under 40. These two ladies see the issue in terms of society as a whole, but they fail to understand the underlying causes, attributing it most likely to Satan’s growing influence.
Some, however, did see that it wasn’t simply a question of Satan’s supposed influence but also a question of the hypocrisy and judgmental nature of contemporary American Christianity:
This comment reveals what I see as one of the primary causes of declining church attendance: the church is continually creating situations that amount to self-inflicted wounds.
Fundamentalist Christians insist that the Genesis account is accurate and that evolutionary theory is a Satanic lie. Then their children learn about the mountain of evidence supporting evolution and they’re forced to choose between the faith of their parents or, as they see it, reality.
Fundamentalist Christians insist that homosexuality has no place in a Christian worldview. Then their children meet queer people and realize, “Hey, they’re not the devils they’re made out to be,” and another church teaching falls to the side.
Fundamentalist Christians remove from their fellowship individuals who choose not to live according to fundamentalist interpretations of sexual morality, and their children find out their soccer coach has been fired, despite parents’ and players’ begging, mid-season because she got pregnant out of wedlock. Then the players are crushed, and a handful of them start thinking, “If this is how Christians behave, I don’t think I need that in my life.”
These are just a handful of the ways modern Christianity is sabotaging itself. Perhaps something like this went on with these commenters’ children.
Others tried to fix the problem.
What happens when prayer doesn’t work, though? What happens when these people are still not returning to church? These poor folks then have a second layer of doubt: why isn’t God helping my child save herself? What am I doing wrong that is preventing this prayer from being answered?
As an aside, the metaphor of prayer as “storming heaven” is always a little strange for me. “Storming” is always used in the sense of an assault — storming the beaches of Normandy. Soldiers storm a position because it’s held by the enemy. In this case, “storming heaven” has connotations of viewing God as an enemy. I’m certain this is not what they intend, but I’m equally certain they’ve never really thought about the metaphor. It just sounds like strong, intense praying — praying really hard.
Some people just passively-aggressively blamed the believers: it’s your fault. You’re not trying hard enough. You’re not holy enough.
This could not possibly be helpful. Such a response only increases the sense of overwhelming guilt these people must feel. As with the “storming heaven” metaphor, this commenter probably didn’t even think this comment out.
Finally, there was the Catholic sense of magical thinking on full display:
The Catholic reliance on relics and holy objects fascinates me. What would this scapular actually do? How would it affect things? And since this husband would be unaware that it’s there, would that amount to God acting against this guy’s will, thus negating the cherished notion of free will, a staple among Christians for explaining how evil exists on earth given the existence of an all-knowing, all-powerful, completely-benevolent god?
I can’t really blame them for their thinking, though: there are certain lines a Christian cannot cross, and “he might have had perfectly good reasons for leaving Christianity, and he might have done so in good faith” is one of them. In such a case, if he found a reason to leave, perhaps I could as well — and that’s unthinkable.
No matter the reason he’d give, though, it wouldn’t be good enough for them.
New Beginnings
The Boy is no longer a Cub Scout. That’s over — a whole phase of his life behind him. Tonight was his first meeting as a Boy Scout.
There was the requisite paperwork — which he filled out. “This is all you, little man,” I told him with a smile.
They started the meeting with introductions to the troop: “We’d like to invite our newest scouts to introduce themselves and tell us a little bit about them.” E stepped forward, shyly as always, and said, “I’m E. I like soccer and guitar.” After introductions, the new scouts went out with some of the older boys to learn the ropes, so to speak.
So different than Cub Scouts. Boy-run, boy-planned, boy-approved. “We’re just there to make sure they do everything safely,” the scoutmaster told us when we first visited back in December.
We parents didn’t see the kids until they were done, wrapping everything up with their circle. In fact, tonight is likely the only night we’ll stay through the whole thing. “Most parents just drop them off and then pick them up later,” the assistant scoutmaster told us new parents.
“This is going to do the Boy so much good,” I told K.
Soccer Walk
Tuesdays are long: first school, then chess club, then a rush to the soccer field to switch cars with K so she can give L my car for her to drive to volleyball while I wait with the Boy at soccer practice. I usually talk a walk and/or run. And since my knees have been troubling me again, it’s more likely the former than the latter.
As the last few soccer seasons have progressed, so has the area around the soccer complex.
The red line is the route of my walk.
The central shaded area is now apartments — it has been for a couple of years. The large shaded area to the right is now completely bare, stripped of all trees with sewage lines and curbs ready for a new housing or apartment development. The triangle to the left is the latest development victim: it’s only been cleared in the last few weeks.
But still on that walk/run, one can find views like this.
Game 2
It was a close game, tied 0-0 at halftime and even throughout the vast majority of the second half. And then, with about one minute remaining, the opposing team scored.
It was disappointing, but the boys played well.
Spring 2023 Soccer
New season, new coach, new team.
Hoping it will all turn out alright.
Walking Around During Practice
While the Boy practices soccer, I either go for a walk or a run, depending primarily on how my knees feel. I’d discovered a nature path near the soccer fields long ago, and that path led to a sewer easement that in turn looked like another nature path. It wound through a forest and by a little creek.
When we came back from Poland and headed over there for the first practice of the fall season, I saw that developers had cleared the land and begun grading it for a new housing or apartment development.
Since then, the work has progressed, with the addition of a retention pond and several retaining walls.
I walked through the area today reflecting on the changes that have come and the further changes coming. What was only months ago a forest is now flat, barren ground; in a few months’ time, it will become someone’s home. They will likely not know about the transformation; they will like never have gone for a jog in the forest that became their backyard.
I find myself sometimes a little obsessed with these little tricks of time and knowledge, and I often wonder about the history of any given thing — a viral video, a house in the middle of nowhere, a car left on the side of the road with a DUI tag — and what led that car, that video, that house to be there at that moment. What led up to that? What were the events that followed one after another until the officer pulls over a weaving driver?
Throw In
It’s heartbreaking to watch the Boy’s team, who has won only one game this year, take a 1-0 lead in the first half only to lose 1-2. But the Boy had a great game.
“I’d say we should move him up to attack,” said one of the parents, “but he’s our best defender, too.”
Final Soccer
It’s been a tough season: our team has one win and who knows how many losses. Each Saturday, we head out, and I tell the Boy to do his best, to enjoy the game, to keep his chin up no matter the outcome, to tell him that they can indeed win because they have done it before — and I convince myself of it. And then three, five, seven minutes into the game, the other team scores its first goal, and I immediately turn pessimistic.
Today was no different. Within the first half of the first half, we were down 0-3. We stopped the hemorrhaging and even scored a goal to enter the half-time break down 1-3.
Then I hear from the couple sitting beside me, “Oh no. No. Dear God, no.” I look up and see that their son is putting on the goalie jersey. This is their son’s first year playing, and like many kids, he’s not particularly athletic. But he wants to play, and he does the best he can. His parents cheer him on continually, and the other boys on the team are supportive as well. “I love my son,” the other said, “but he doesn’t throw himself in front of anything.” Yet the boys hold it together fairly well, letting two more goals in while scoring two more themselves to end 3-5.
After our third goal, one of the parents from the other team became irate. “Call the illegal throw!” he screamed. I didn’t see that our boys had done anything illegal, but he apparently thought they had. I glanced over to see a fairly muscular tattooed man with bulging veins in his neck as he yelled “Call the illegal throw!” again.
What a jerk, I thought. What a way to set an excellent example: yell at the ref who is himself a high-school-aged kid. How embarrassing.
Eventually, he calmed down, but he continued making remarks about the ref and how our boys weren’t following the rules.
I wanted to walk over to him and say, “Look, man, it’s a game. They’re kids; the ref is a kid; your kid’s team is up by 2 — calm yourself and stop making an ass of yourself.” Of course, that would have made me just as bad as he in many ways, and nothing good could come of a confrontation like that.
It turns out, though, that this was the opponents’ first win of the season. That makes us tied as far as records go…
Our Games
The Boy’s first games with his new soccer team took place today. It was a tough start to the season: 0-4 and 0-5 losses. I was expecting him to be terribly disappointed about it, but he was surprisingly stoic: “We have some things we need to fix, but we could be good.”
The Girl’s high school varsity team, for which L plays middle, won their first tournament today.
A day of contrasts.
Team Picture Spring 2022
Last Saturday in April
The Boy’s soccer team is finishing up this weekend with a tournament. They lost their first game today 0-4, and they tied their second game at one apiece. I didn’t take the camera to the first game; I wasn’t at the second game, so no pictures.
Instead, a picture from twenty years ago.
Soccer and the Yard
E had two games today to make up for the game that got rained out some time ago. They won the second game 3-1, but the first game was tough: a 1-4 loss.
In the second half, E played goalie. It was 1-2 when the half started. On the opponents’ first possession, they scored.
I knew it would be tough on the Boy — he doesn’t like letting people down, whether or not that’s what actually happened. They scored one more on the Boy. I had the camera up, hoping to get a good action shot of E stopping the ball.
Not quite.
“I’m never playing goalie again,” he declared.
More Testing
“Isn’t that test in a couple of weeks the state test?” Mrs. G asked this morning.
“No, no,” clarified Mrs. H. “In a couple of weeks it’s the state pilot TDA test. The actual state test won’t be until May.”
“Remember Mrs. J was telling us about the test the state is making our school take and how Mr. F[, the school principal,] was trying to convince the district to count the state test in lieu of the second [district-mandated] test?”
“Oh, yes, I remember that.” The discussion continued along the lines of how frustrating it is to be testing so much but how we can get our kids more prepared for these district- and state-mandated tests.
That three English teachers were having trouble figuring out just how many major, schedule-impacting writing tests there were to be this year says a lot about the testing load the district and state put on teachers and students.
Our district mandates quarterly benchmark tests in English and math through the third quarter, and each of these impact the schedule and learning environment in a major way. Plus, the district requires us to give two major writing tests in preparation for the state writing test. Each of these take half the school day. So that’s eight days of testing right there — testing days that affect all classes and shorten all periods by approximately half. Naturally, it’s hard to get kids to engage in meaningful learning when they’ve just spent two hours analyzing some awful short story that’s at least 70 years old because the testing companies want to save money (i.e., boost revenue) by using texts that are in the public domain and hence don’t require licensing fees. (We English teachers hear all the time about how important it is to choose texts about things young readers can relate to, and the the state farms out its test development to a company that completely disregards that.) So the day is in essence a wash. Eight days down the drain — almost two full school weeks.
And that’s just what the district mandates.
It’s bad enough that the district puts middle and high school students through this; it’s also rammed through the elementary schools. The Boy had his district-mandated third-quarter math benchmark test today. It was almost sixty questions. For a fourth grader.
I’ve been saying that eventually, the US has to realize this obsession with testing is doing nothing but harm to our students, and the powers that be eventually have to change this, but I’ve been saying it for nearly twenty years now, and instead of getting better, it’s getting worse.
What’s worse is, I don’t know of a single teacher that takes these benchmarks all that seriously. “They’re designed to show for which topics students need remediation,” the six-figure-salaried district big-shots explain to us. If as a teacher who’s now spent nearly 150 days working with these kids I can’t tell you off the top of my head who needs remediation with what topic, I probably am not putting enough thought into my teaching.
What’s frustrating is, I don’t know of a single classroom teacher that had any input into the discussion about whether these obsessive, intrusive tests would have any value to the teacher at all. These decisions were made by individuals making two to three times what teachers make while spending absolutely no time in the classroom. They haven’t been in a classroom for over a decade at best, I’d venture.
I sometimes wonder what would happen if a whole school — everyone from administrators on down — simply refused to spend the time administering these tests. Everyone. Simple refusal. “We’ve decided as a school that this is not the best way to spend our students’ time.” What if some schools did it? What if all schools did it? What if teachers were vocal about their opposition to all this testing (well, they are, to be honest)?
I imagine what I’d do if I were a student. All the students of course hate these tests. They’re completely meaningless to them. I think I’d be tempted just to choose random answers and apologize to my teacher if it ended up making him look bad in the eyes of the powers that be.
Random Pictures from the Walk I Took during the Boy’s Soccer Practice
Early Spring Saturday
We started out with back-to-back games with the Boy. They won the first game 2-0 (I think — maybe it was only 1), but lost the second game 1-2. They scored first, but on the very next possession, the opposing team equalized. They scored one more in the second half to pull ahead. We had one shot that hit the goal uprights but didn’t go in, and we had about 4 more close shots on goal, but none of them went in.
In the afternoon, it was yardwork.
