Sunday, April 5, 2009

A great win

On Wednesday afternoon, my boys from Christ School pulled off a great 3-1 victory over the other undefeated team in our group. This school is just down the road, so the rivalry was hot (including among the fans), and our opponents were bigger and probably faster than we are. It’s been a pretty amazing transformation that’s happened in the team this year. After watching our first game, where we kicked the ball wildly this way and that, held it too long yet never had control, it felt like coaching a different team, as we produced a convincing victory by controlling possession and building relatively organized attacks. It’s been great to see the boys respond to the things that I’ve been trying to instill in them, and there have been a number of cases where I pulled aside specific players, with whom I’m particularly frustrated, and seen them respond in great form the next day. Players who seemed incurable suddenly changing their ways, to the benefit of the whole team. I’ve had several community members approach me to thank me for coaching and say things like: “They are playing such good football!” “We never expected to see them play like this!”

Tempers ran high, as they do in most rivalry games, which included a number a yellow cards, a red card to one of my top players, and dozens of drunk opposing fans standing on the pitch, screaming at the referee and taunting my players, the head coach I work under, and me. And by the way, they were mostly standing within 20 feet of me, to trying to bother me as much as possible. Despite my many attempts to restrain myself, in the end I wasn’t entirely successful, and when a particularly drunk and obnoxious fan stepped on to the field, approaching my player who had just received a red card, and began taunting and harassing him, I couldn’t hold myself back any more. I stepped onto the field myself, grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him back toward the sideline. Needless to say, neither he nor his fellow rowdy opposing fans were very happy about that, but then again, I didn’t care so much about their happiness at the moment. I probably should have stayed above all of the fray, but I often feel obligated to try to maintain some semblance of order (definitely a losing battle), and at the time I was trying to stand up for my player.

So what’s the point of my work with the football team? Sometimes I stop and try to think about the reason that I’m doing things, the value in them. However, it occurs to me that in a lot of ways, what I’m doing is just living out my life among the people here. Not everything I do needs to have a noble or heroic reason behind it. Coaching youth football is the sort of thing that I’d do anywhere because it’s a part of who I am, so I’m doing it here. I’m also a firm believer in education being more than just academics, and I personally developed through playing football in ways that I couldn’t have in the classroom, so I’m hoping that the boys will benefit in that way. I’ve had some interesting conversations recently with some team members that have pointed out something else. Most of these boys have had very hard lives. Some are orphans, many come from broken, abusive families, and almost all of them have had very little success at any point in their lives. Things just don’t go well for a lot of kids here: their fathers beat them, they’re often sick, they do poorly in school because the education system is just bad. There are very few positive experiences and little positive reinforcement. Maybe just believing in them, when not many people do, is significant enough to affect their lives. It’s been pointed out to me that the simple act of scoring a goal, making a good pass, or winning a game could be one of the best and most significant things that’s ever happened to some of these boys. I’m hoping that this year they’re having fun, learning about hard work and dedication, being challenged, and having positive experiences that they might not have in other areas of their lives.

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