Category: Dear Kids

Dear Kids: It’s War!

Dear Kids: It’s War!

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I’ve been having a hard time lately with Alex’s newly found favorite game.

Every time there’s a deck of cards at hand, or a parent without a clear chore in hand, or a new person walking in the room Alex will ask: “Do you want to play a game of War?”

Dear Kids,

War is a perfectly fine card game. It is not quite the test of skill and strategy Alex seems to think it is. There’s a lot more luck and circumstance that influences the outcome (even if you are a seven year old who will carefully stack the deck–without admitting it). And the game can just drag on into eternity if you’re not careful with absolutely no one winning.

And so, I realized for the first time in forty-two years on the planet: the game truly is war.

It’s been a bloody year. The war in Ukraine drags on. The war in Gaza batters people pleading for help. There was a staggering 12 day battle in Iran that ended suddenly (and may restart just as suddenly). All that and there continues to be simmering conflicts that draw little international attention in Sudan, Haiti, Myanmar, Congo, Kenya, and Ecuador. These wars are brutal and bloody affairs that have their origins long before even your grandparents were born.

There are some leaders who try to stack the deck in their favor, only to have it all come undone due to unforeseen circumstances: from the weather to promises of hotels. All of the beliefs of childhood, that there is a way to win the war (in card games, in nerf gun battles, in anything) are woefully mistaken. All the simplicity of good versus bad, right versus wrong, Jedi versus Sith that guide you kids in your understanding of conflict, is just not viable.

The Nobel Prize Laureates I’ve been reading get that. Again and again they revisit the theme that all war is unjust, all war is cruel, all war is random. From Bertha Von Suttner and George Bernard Shaw up to Harold Pinter and Elfriede Jelinek, it’s just danger and violence and then it repeats all over again.

This is where measured and sane sports coaches are a welcome distraction. Freiburg’s Christian Streich and Julian Schuster always made plain that they cared about the safety and well being of people in dangerous areas, and that they held no grudges or animosity against their opponents on the field. Minnesota’s Eric Ramsay, Montana’s Chris Citowiki, they both acknowledge the hard work that their team puts in to win, not the deplorable opponents. This spring saw the end of Big Ange Postecoglou’s run at a top English team, and through it all he was considerate and mindful of the other side and his own (maybe not as much the press, but…c’est la vie).

There are so many ways to play at War. And I know that the looming presence of shoot-em-up video games will add another layer of this. I know that politicians and media and historians love to dig in to the stratagems and offensives to assign medals and blame. I know that comforting narrative makes it easy to decide that War is a good way to show your intelligence, bravery, and worth.

But I hope you listen to the poets. I hope you listen to (some) of the coaches. I hope you listen to the victims: War harms us all.

Thoughts on Father’s Day

Thoughts on Father’s Day

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This is my 8th Father’s Day as a father. I’m sitting down to write this after grabbing toast fixings and passing the responsibility for making it to the kids. I’m hearing chants of “chicken-chicken-latte!” while they battle lego figurines in a complex game of dragon-clones created for nefarious purposes. And I’m looking at a long list of things I’ve wanted to write and hopefully will get to start today.

But first, a regrounding of sorts.

Dear Boys,

I’ve set aside essay writing for a while. Largely because I’ve felt like I get too wrapped up in my own mind and lose sight of what matters in the moment. I tried to keep up on writing about specific teams, players and games, but I was too inundated with work to do more than see the scores and sigh (seriously: Emelec, Legon, and Ross County seem determined to find the maximum sigh volume in my voice…and besides, if any hard core fans are coming here for scores and analysis…why?).

But I know writing is important to me. And I know that writing, whatever form it takes, helps me to be both aware of the moment, and of the broader world around me. So, I reason, I ought to write sometimes just about myself, my world, and where I’m at.

Without a doubt myself, my world and where I am shifted most clearly a few months ago when Owen (age 5) told us they didn’t feel “like a boy or a girl”.

Before that, I loved Owen totally, unreservedly, and absolutely.

Afterwards, I have continued to love Owen totally, unreservedly, and absolutely.

But the rush of everything has left me little time to really be aware of what this all means.

Part of me feels like it doesn’t mean much. After all, Owen has been insisting on wearing “dresses” (at first long t-shirts, but increasingly Taylor Swift/Disney Princess-style costumes/ballgowns) since they were 2. Owen freely shifts between Darth Vader light sabers and Queen Elsa ice blasts depending on which will serve them best in the moment. In short, Owen hasn’t quite conformed to the “boys wear blue and love trucks” mentality for many years. That has confused some of my family members but has also been widely accepted and encouraged by most everyone we know.

But to label it–to say “mom, dad, I am neither”–has required a bigger shift in thinking than I expected and I need to consider it, thus the writing. I am striving to switch pronouns after five years of ingrained habits. I am unblinkingly answering questions from peers like “how are your boys?” with things like “my son Alex is reading on his own, and my child Owen is super excited to do their Pout Pout Fish dance recital.” I am down to be Owen’s dad and champion.

But part of me worries: I don’t want to co-opt my child’s journey to become a story about me. Nor do I expect applause for providing basic love and compassion to my own offspring. However, in this moment of our lives writing these thoughts down has helped me to realize where the changed happened. Not in Owen. Not in the way I feel or think about them. Instead this has been a clear and decisive shift from a time when I would passively just “let Owen explore” to a time when I MUST say “Owen is exploring and I am going to advocate for them.”

So, I read the literature. I ask questions. I stand side by side when they speak, back them up when they need it, and step up if they’re scared. (Suffice to say, as the kids attend a Jesuit school despite my Lutheran-upbringing and my wife’s agnosticism, we were surprisingly invested in the papal conclave. ) I did tell a principal, “if you’re going to walk with us on this journey, you need to let other families know they should not block the path.” (I did not find the gumption to tell that same principal “you know what would help us on our journey…if you tried saying “they” rather than “he”, you know…just to prove to yourself that you won’t blow up if you use a non-gendered pronoun.)

Moreover, I know I have to I stand by Alex just as much. Both as he grows up answering classmates’ disbelief and navigating a shift in the sibling dynamic, and as he becomes more a more independent young man who makes his own toast and writes his own stories (about nefarious dragon-clones which the more I write it sounds cooler and cooler).

This is my 8th Father’s Day as a father, but it is my first as a parent of someone who openly identifies outside of gender binaries. I am scared of making mistakes (emotional harm is much more impactful than the professional athletes playing in the second division come the fall), I am intimidated by sitting down to write about these thoughts and blasting them out in to the world. But if I intend to be a father to my children in all their ever-evolving glory, I need to be here.

To be here, it helps to write about it.

To write about it, it helps to have a venue to share things. And so…here we are.

This has been the MacKenzie Boys’ Bootroom, but the second word is not only inaccurate, I acknowledge now that it has always been irrelevant. So this is now The MacKenzie’s Bootroom. Long may it be so.

This Is Why You Stay to the End

This Is Why You Stay to the End

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This year, after a long, cold winter, the promise of spring began to bud as the American soccer season opened.

Sorry…I meant to say after an indeterminable and clearly climate changed winter, the weather felt exactly the same as the American soccer season opened.

And this year, I went with Alex.

Dear Boys,

It was not a great game. The Loons, fortunate winners the previous week, faced the reigning champions: The Columbus Crew. Our team was shorthanded, with several players working up to fitness, and we were limited to a temporary set of tactics from their caretaker manager. So it wasn’t surprising that the local eleven seemed stuck in the first half. The biggest cheer for most of the game came when former Loon Christian Ramirez made his first appearance at Allianz Field and was welcomed warmly by the long time fans…making a competitive match feel rather friendly.

It was great to see him return, to celebrate a player who was widely loved in the community. But he also clearly added a bit of danger to the Columbus. And then…the champions took the lead. The Loons quickly look deflated, but the sun was shining and our fries were salty so Alex and I stayed on to watch the end of the match.

That’s when we got our reward:

The stadium erupted, our section erupted, we screamed like we’d won even though it was only a draw. “This,” I shouted over the chaos, “is why you stay until the end.”

It’s a kind of perseverance, enduring the long slog of a game, or a season for the sake of one magical moment. It’s a passive perseverance, not the kind of spiritual struggle of long-standing activists, or the physical slog athletes go through. But fandom might be the best training wheel version of perseverance that we have.

There are always opportunities to walk away. Fans can leave the stadium. We can turn off the games. We can ignore the sports pages. And honestly, there’s nothing inherently wrong with it. Stepping away from things can protect you from injury or harm.

But perseverance can be rewarded with moments that offer real catharsis.

The Loons, against the odds continued trying to find the goal, despite the various limitations that could have justified a defeat.

Christian Ramirez had innumerable opportunities to step away from the game. When he didn’t get a professional opportunity on his first attempt. When he was hung out to dry by the Loons prior manager (who never seemed to appreciate the talent on the sideline). When his trip to Europe was undermined by managerial upheaval. When his family grew and his career path was uncertain.

But he has a League Championship medal and he received a rapturous ovation from fans who saw him start and have admired him even after he left us behind.

However the story ends, if you stick around till the end you can appreciate it all the more. Whether it ends with one point in the standings, a hero’s return, or just celebrating with your kid/dad. These are special moments, and they’re made all the more special if you persevere to see them through. If it’s this fun to watch others persevere, just wait till you get to do it yourself.

Double-Edged Passion

Double-Edged Passion

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The more time I spend with you boys the more I come to recognize that lessons about life, about our world, about important skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic, all stand subordinate to lessons about our emotions.

While there are many times where you need to vent your anger, or express your sadness, or scream out your joy, there’s one emotion that cuts across all of them: passion. It may not be an emotion in and of itself, but rather an intensity of emotion that supercharges each feeling to its extremity.

Sadness isn’t just sadness, it’s a part of “the WORST DAY EVER”. Frustration isn’t just frustration it’s the impetus for each of you to slam doors and scream out “YOU. RUIN. EVERYTHING!!!”

At four and six you are still learning how to express emotions, how to handle the extremity and how to appreciate the nuances.

But you aren’t the only ones.

Dear Boys,

Of all the things that happened in our small corner of the soccer world, I found myself thinking about this moment in Dingwall, Scotland frequently.

@theukcasualsway

Partick Thistle Fans Nicking The Ross County Drum Today 😳 #football #footballer #fans #footballfans #footballforlife #uk #unitedkingdom #footballcasuals #casuals #casualstyle #casualclobber #casualculture #casualscene #pyro #tifosi #tifos #tifoso #ultras #ultrasworld #ultrasmentality #ultrasstyle #premierleague #efl #eflchampionship #spfl #limbs #awayfans #awayends #uefa

♬ original sound – Ukcasualsway

That’s fans of Partick Thistle letting their passions run riot before a Cup match at the end of January. Given that Thistle lost a painful playoff battle just last June to County, I can understand why emotions were running hot. Given that their team was in fine form while County was bedraggled, I understand why there was such confidence and energy.

But I keep thinking about that last moment. Watching one young man stop, grab, and rip away another young man’s drum. I understand the emotions. I understand how passions rise up, but I just don’t understand why it has to lead to pushing down someone else in order to lift yourself up.

I certainly have seen you both tussle and bicker over this toy or that one. I’ve watched your feelings turn into passions, and your passions turn into punches (or the four-year-old-equivalent), and I honestly can see a physical resemblance between you both and the young men in this video (the men are likely only 10-15 years older than you).

One of many intense fights

I see all this, all these echoes of you in bigger bodies, thousands of miles away. And I worry.

I like that you have all the emotions. I like that you express them. But I don’t want you to fall into this trap.

Lots of people have lots of emotions. All of them are real, and none of them are bad. But when we let passion push our emotions beyond ourselves to interrupt others, there’s a problem.

First and foremost, if you let your passions run the show, you risk harming others. Add to that, when other people get harmed, their passions intensify and suddenly you’re at risk as well. Consider, as well, that as you grow into bigger bodies, bigger muscles, and develop a bigger arsenal of attacks, you face bigger consequences. You can be seen as a threat, a dangerously violent force, and you can face legal consequences too.

That’s what happened to these young men. I’m sure their petty hooliganism released their passions in the moment, but it also made them targets of police inquiries.

It’s not only the young pseudo toughs who let their passions get the better of them. Sometimes, it’s the older adults who are supposed to be mature enough to lead others.

That’s County manager, Derek Adams, the same man who helped the Stags climb to the Premiership years ago. Frustration for him turns into an impassioned argument, but one against his own players, the men he claims to lead. Saying that they (and their opponents) are “rubbish” that they aren’t worth paying to see, that they are 100 times worse than a lower tier team in England.

Conveniently, Adams opted to quit working with “rubbish” players after they continued to struggle (not long after that cup defeat against Thistle as a matter of fact).

I don’t mind that Adams was frustrated or that he let his frustrations pour out in a passionate outburst after a difficult match. I do mind that he let his passion excuse some cruelty to people who are trying their best. Adams didn’t steal a child’s drum, or commit petty vandalism, but he did bully and ridicule others.

Passion is important. It can give you motivation and energy to do more than you imagine. It can connect you to others and build a community of enthusiastic strivers. But it can also run down others and isolate you from those who could help you.

Passion is powerful. Learn from the poor examples of Derek Adams and County’s highland rivals. Please, use it to empower and unite, not to batter and divide.

Reclaiming Benevolence

Reclaiming Benevolence

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I was in a teacher activity thinking about words that are immutable parts of ourselves. Obviously thinking about you boys, and what I have, and all those good things, I thought of love.

Dear, Boys

But love can go many directions and many ways. You can adore things and hold them up beyond their reach. You can yearn for things and have a lot, a lot of wanting. But I ended up pairing it with another word I use a lot “give”, so the words the related words to love that stood out most were “care”, “cherish” and “benevolence”

Benevolence doesn’t actually have that great of a sound to it. Many people look at “benevolence” a little like a smug and distant force. Your mom works in the arts where “benefactors” are people who give large sums of money and end up with their name on walls or programs. Your grandpa Bruce (the original MacKenzie Boy) is fond of the image of a “Benevolent Dictator” someone who will use total power to do kind and just things. (Your grandpa likes it because it’s about as realistic as having a seven-headed kitten.)

But, I still like “benevolence”. And because I am who I am, I dug into the word. Looking not at what it means to people now, but how the word grew and developed.

Benevolent, like most latin-derived words, starts with the ending: “ent”–doing…I like that because I like active rather than passive love; next “volo”–wishes…I like that because so much is out of our control, you can control your hopes and aspirations and wishes for the world; finally “bene”–good. So put it all together and Benevolent means “doing good wishes”, if you are benevolent you aren’t giving money or ruling the world, you are just wishing well for other people, sending goodness and compassion outward.

I like that root of “benevolence”. But it isn’t easy.

Forgive the facist meme, this is the negative…

It’s hard for you kids. You can do it when we’re cuddled up at the end of the day and I ask you who you want to send gratitude or love to. But in the middle of the day, chores become “why do you make me do everything!”, “I never get to play!” and “I can’t do it, I’m just stupid!”. Play time becomes “gimme that”, ”no, that’s mine,” and “you’re a stupid head, I’m leaving!!”. Honestly, I feel it come up in my own words, “why aren’t you listening to me?”, “boys, I said, No,” and “just do what I asked you, please?”.

It’s hard to offer benevolence up when things feel so antagonistic.

The same thing is true in sports. It’s not an extremely benevolent field. Instead people obsess over results and outcomes. Soccer is often a zero sum affair: a game where there is a winner and a loser and a sense that in order to get something good for yourself, someone else has to suffer.

But it’s also in soccer where you can see great examples of benevolence.

Two of my favorite coaches preach this perspective. Looking for the good in the community and the positives for everyone.

Chris Citowicki’s first standard in recruiting for the University of Montana was to make a pledge to recruits. “I promise that when it’s all over, You will have had the best four years of your life.” He’s not pledging to make them “winners” or to become professionals or win national (or even conference championships), he is focused on the best four years: socially, academically, everything. He wants what’s best for his team…not what results in the most wins on the field.

Christian Streich’s politics are a welcome breath of fresh air, all the more so when he looks for ways to wish well for everyone involved in a hot button issue. At a time when politics is very much a blood sport, he speaks in ways to understand others. In the heat of an immigration crisis, he spoke about the needs of refugees and to the emotions of the heated few: “Right now is the time to open up to people, to receive [refugees], to reduce fears. It is often about the fear of others and the fear of strangers. It’s about getting to know other ways of thinking.”

The goal isn’t to be right while your opponents admit defeat. It’s to welcome people in need, and help those who are afraid to find hope and confidence in knowledge rather than fear.

In thinking about soccer, I certainly grind my teeth over unlucky results or unfair whistles, I definitely glower at lucky punks and grumble about unfair systems, but that good wishing, that kindness mentality, that’s what I aspire to.

More than proving I’m right and you’re wrong. More than making you play nice. I genuinely wish you can find the good: the good in yourselves, the kindness and compassion and love for each other, the strength to do it on your own.

I want to bring back benevolence: for the players I cheer for, for the neighbors I disagree with, for you boys even in the peaks of your anguish.

Start by wishing well for others, and let your actions follow.

86. Embrace the Chaos

86. Embrace the Chaos

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Earlier this year, one of our teams went viral.

In September, during one of Oaxaca’s rare offensive outbursts, a stray dog simply could not contain it’s excitement and did this before the final whistle blew…

Clearly, this wasn’t intended. I’m sure that the players would have rather been seen world wide for a particularly fantastic bit of skill, or a startling comeback with a thunderous goal.

But rather than complain or shout or think about what they had wanted to happen, everyone on the team and in the office chose to celebrate. They adopted Max, welcoming him as a new mascot/substitute player (truthfully, given the rate they shipped goals…and Max’s impressive ball control, it was a joke that might have been better as fact).

More often than not, you kids have plans in place, and you hate when anything disrupts them. Alex wants to play with someone else, and to win. Owen has whole dramatic scenes perfectly scripted in his head, that the rest of us, infuriatingly, don’t execute as he wants. (Honestly, I’m not sure why it takes three people to have a stuffed shark wake up a baby komodo dragon…or why it’s Owen’s daily ritual…but here we are.)

I have the same problem. I want you to eat a full meal. I want you to be on time to school. I want you to get to bed at a decent hour so you can have a full night’s sleep. And, while I may not stamp, or scream or snit when it doesn’t happen, I don’t really celebrate either.

But Alebrijes shows us that it doesn’t have to be that way. We can embrace the chaos, we can welcome the unforeseen interruption and appreciate what it is rather than what we want it to be. In all of it, there’s a joy to be had when you let go of what you want and embrace what you have (if only for a moment).

Dear Boys,

84. The Right Fight

84. The Right Fight

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Dear Boys,

The men of the MacKenzie family have a particular weakness for speechifying.

We enjoy jalapeno kettle chips more than we ought to, and we all think we’re much funnier than anyone ever tells us, but our real flaw is speechifying.

So, naturally, we love the movies and plays of Aaron Sorkin, who never encountered a conflict that couldn’t be solved with a rousing, well-intentioned speech by an educated white guy.

With all those flaws, it should be little surprise that this bit from his film The American President is one of my favorite lines in all of film.

That’s a rallying cry that your uncles, your grandfather, your second cousins and pretty much anybody who has been in the room with us in a serious debate knows and knows well. It’s speechifying 101. It’s catnip to our big dumb man-cat brains.

It’s also a good way to live.

And it’s why I was utterly livid at the attitude of moronic speechifying men after the Women’s World Cup.

Infantino…looking for a clue.

Start with FIFA President, Gianni Infantino. The Swiss dollar store Mr. Clean substitute, concluded one of the most balanced women’s world cups in history, one of the most exciting and truly globalized celebrations of women in sports with an utterly tone deaf and moronic attempt to mansplain what women who want things to keep improving ought to do:

“Pick the right battles. Pick the right fights. You have the power to change. You have the power to convince us men what we have to do and what we don’t have to do. You do it. Just do it.”

….

“[Equal pay for men’s and women’s world cup teams] would not solve anything. It might be a symbol but it would not solve anything, because its one month every four years and its a few players out of the thousand and thousands of players.”

Gianni Infantino

Okay so awkwardly…I agree with a lot of the first paragraph. I want to encourage people to make advocate for change. But I’m a shmo on a keyboard in Minnesota opining to my kids. Gianni Infantino is in charge of international soccer from the highest to the lowest levels. Fighting the fights that need fighting is a laudable goal. It’s advice I give to you and to my students. It isn’t advice I dole out to people who are trying to get me to change my mind about a policy I can control.

Infantino’s call to action isn’t “GO GET EM!”, it’s more “get off my back already and go do something that matters.”

For proof look at the second paragraph quoted. Women players at the elite level have been agitating for equal pay (goodness knows the American women certainly deserve it given how wildly they outperform their male counterparts). So for Infantino to toss it away as meaningless and symbolic after telling people to advocate for change is a complete Not-In-My-BackYard, psuedo-supporter cop out.

Infantino could make equal pay in the professional game, the confederation tournaments, the club level, a requirement to host or play in FIFA’s gold-standard tournaments. Pushing athlete-activists to go somewhere else and give up on a goal he could help influence is a big ol’ sack of bull-puckey.

So here’s a more honest translation of Infantino’s mealy-mouthed attempt at unity

“Look, gimme a break alright. You want all these things so bad, go ask other people to do it…I don’t know what you could ask for or who you could ask, but I want you to do it somewhere other than here.

I know you’ve wanted equal pay…but, no. I’m not convinced, and as I said before…I’m tired of hearing you ask for it, so go ask someone else.”

–Gianni Infantino’s Inner-Monologue (SATIRE)

And yet, Infantino’s comments are only one prong of the pitchfork of stupid that ended the world cup. The other end belonged to the president of the Spanish federation, Luis Rubiales.

After watching a collection of superb athletes win the world championship, Rubiales decided it was a good time to grab star player Jenni Hermoso and give her a kiss on the lips.

Jenni Hermoso: Awesome Person

When people said it was wrong, he said those people were “idiots and stupid people”. When Hermoso told an interviewer that she “didn’t like it”, he (and his office) pretended that she made a statement claiming it was “natural celebration”. When the government called it “a form of sexual violence” and likened it to long running issues in Spanish society, he complained that it was all “false feminism, that doesn’t seek justice or truth.” Even when Hermoso filed a criminal complaint, he insisted he wouldn’t resign.

All the speechifying and justification and stubbornness in the world couldn’t cover up that Luis Rubiales crossed a line, and that Hermoso and her allies were fighting for what they believed in.

In the end they won. In the end, I hope and believe that those advocating for equal pay for women athletes will win. In the end, I believe that the fight will be won, and that the simplistic scratch satisfied by a bit of well-intentioned speechifying will lose.

The women’s world cup is great, but the players symbolize more than tremendous performers. They embody one of my favorite bits of speechifying in the face of some of my least favorite speechifying.

You don’t fight the fights you can win. You fight the fights that need fighting.

Grateful for the Hard Stuff

Grateful for the Hard Stuff

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As I write this it is Thanksgiving.

As I write this I feel thankful.

I also feel terrible.

Dear Boys,

I know that there’s a (digital) stack of essays still waiting to be graded from two weeks ago. I know that there’s a pile up of discarded ideas and old summaries that I ought to work on for this website. I know that there’s a pretty descent novel manuscript that I just cannot get back around to editing because my brain can’t handle responsibilities of refining writing, creating lesson plans, instituting parenting strategems and maintaining our basic household functions.

I feel like a failure, like a pretender and a clown. I feel like I’m clogged up in emotions and anxieties and wants and wishes. I feel guilty and ashamed to be dwelling on my feelings and my desires when you, my sons, are growing up all around me. Why am I trying to do stuff for myself when you need things? Shouldn’t you get love, affection, support, structure? Shouldn’t that be my top priority and I be able to release all the shame and guilt and wanting to write?

It feels like the wanting to do other things is selfish. And yet giving up on doing them feels awful too. It feels like co-signing the notion that I’m only one thing: rather than a whole and complex person. It feels like bottling up all my humanity and putting on a mask of plastic passivity. It feels like admitting that this project is a waste of time and gigabytes…and so are my ideas…and so am I.

Yes, I’m being melodramatic. Yes, I’m overanalyzing every aspect of the situation. Yes, there’s room for both me being your parent and me being myself. But it’s also true and natural that there’s a lot of emotional baggage that comes with all of that.

This is the hard part.

And this is why I am grateful.

A lot of the time when we say goodnight and I ask you what you’re thankful for, we name people we love and things that were fun. We’re always grateful for Momma, and eachother, and we give regular shout outs to grandparents, Pokemon, Frozen stories, Mini the cat, spaghetti sauce, bath bombs and butterflies.

We don’t usually name the things that go wrong, or the people who frustrate us. We don’t say we’re grateful for having a huge upset or tantrum. We don’t say we’re thankful for the mean words at school, or the swift rushes to denigrate ourselves. We don’t sit around the Thanksgiving table to say thank you for cruelty, or for war, or for the burnt vegetables.

But those things all help us in their own ways. We learn how to handle our emotions. We see the beauty and resilience of who we are despite the anger of ourselves and others. We learn to be kind, to seek peace, and to laugh at mistakes.

Roundglass Punjab has had a rough go of it in the top division of Indian soccer. It has been hard to score goals and harder still to hold leads. They sit at the bottom of the table and have the worst goal differential in the league.

Khaiminthang Lhungdim runs away from another celebrating team. (From Devidiscourse.com)

They don’t like losing. But they are getting better, more refined and more able to compete each and every time they play. Punjab won’t put together a championship campaign this time around, but they will have the season they need to, learn from it, and be better because of it.

I’m grateful that I’m having a hard time writing, it makes me remember what I really like: doing it…not meeting a goal or hitting a deadline, just writing.

I’m grateful that I’m dealing with a wide array of emotions and thoughts when it comes to doing what I want and being who I want to be. It will help me find the balance I need to live.

The world is full of hard stuff these days. There’s a lot to mourn, to fight, to critique and to dislike. But we can learn from it, we can grow from it, we can find what we want in the inverse of what we don’t like. So, like it or not, we should be grateful for the hard stuff.

83. New Season, New-Ish You

83. New Season, New-Ish You

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There’s always a slightly sad air to the end of Summer. The days get shorter. The freedom gets staler. The brightest greens and liveliest flowers start to droop and fade.

But it’s also an exciting time of year. For all the ends and declines, there are many important starts at hand.

That’s especially true in our household. Alex is starting kindergarten. I’m going back into full classroom teaching. And teams around the world are starting new seasons.

Now isn’t just the time for things around us to change, it’s time to see our world and ourselves with fresh eyes.

Dear Boys,

At the start of the year every soccer team is handed a clean slate. The league table is a beautiful string of zeroes. You can write your team down at the top of the league for possibly the only time all year.

In the classroom, the white boards and chalkboards seem totally unblemished, and you can imagine anything and everything on them. Before you walk into the room, you can imagine uncovering any number of universal secrets inside its walls, even the mystery of friendship, or the perfect fart joke, or how to write an “R”.

All of those possibilities exist because, during the summer, your time and mind was consumed with day to day doing and being. The previous school year or football season has just been gestating in your brain, mellowing, maturing, leaving behind ingrained skills and important areas for growth that you will now leap at with full enthusiasm.

Alex is hesitant to fail, but can, more often than not sound out the letters in simple Consanant/Vowel/Consonant words (“hop”, “but”, “red”, etc.).

I am leery of collapsing into bad habits, but I’m also more prepared to accept my limitations and work with less obsession in my grading and more gratitude in my everything else.

Guittieriez (Quadratin Oaxaca)

Our favorite teams are in new situations as well. Alebrijes brings their new coach Carlos Guitierrez with a new style into the mix. Freiburg will have high hopes for the new striker Junior Adamu, possibly being the dribbling, penetrating attacker that frees up Vincenzo Grifo to do more than feed the ball into the box. The Griz will have new keepers to audition including, fingers crossed, our favorite Aurora/Grizz Bayliss Flynn.

With all this new-ness you can feel like its time to start over.

But it isn’t.

Don’t let the smolder deceive you…I wasn’t feeling good.

Yes it’s a new season. Yes it’s a new opportunity. Yes, you have new skills, and talents, and ideas…but you are still you. You still have the same history, the same memories, the same triumphs and tragedies.

Carlos Guitierrez doesn’t get to mind-wipe all of Oaxaca’s old habits. Freiburg still has a recent habit of fading out of top spots at the end of the year. I will always remember the hard, cold, charred sensation that came with another sheaf of essays weighing down my bag and sitting heavily on my conscious with guilty self-critique because I didn’t do enough to help every kid improve.

And Alex still wants to use whatever he learns to build and control a dinosaur robot. Chris Citowicki still manages to coax epic goalkeeping outings from the scholars who stand in Missoula.

This is a new season, just as last year was once new, and the year before that, and the one before that.

We struggled and we grew then. We will struggle and grow now.

It’s a new season, and a new-ish you, a new-ish me, a new-ish team. We have an opportunity to start again, with both our talents and our flaws to guide us. This new season, this new school-year, might be great, it might be hard, but it will definitely be what we make of it.

82. Bring Your Best Attitude

82. Bring Your Best Attitude

by scruffyrube ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

In the preparation work for the Nobel XI writing experiment, I read a book by prize winner JM Coetzee where the South African writes about an unfair soccer match.

For context, a rag tag group of local boys, including protagonist David, is groomed to play against a local team with more resources (a group from a do-gooding orphanage). When the local boys are summarily drubbed by the orphans, David’s guardian storms on to the field and denounces the orphans and their teacher.

“This is not a football game, this is a slaughter of the innocents…They are bullies. They win by intimidating their opponents…If you really want to test your team, Senor, you should play against stronger opponents.”

JM Coetzee The Death of Jesus

That same despair of unfair treatment occurs in a few other spheres of our Soccer fandom, and with surprising frequency in the women’s game.

In the USL-W Heartland, Minnesota Aurora is patently the dominant force. The biggest market, the biggest ownership base, the most accomplished players leading to consecutive unbeaten seasons and local conference titles. To our rivals in Chicago, Green Bay and Kenosha, our lovable little Aurora is the biggest bully on the playground.

Dear Boys,

At the same time, half-way around the world, the Women’s World Cup has kicked off with its largest ever field. It will feature teams from 32 nations in action (the same as the men’s, though for less prize money). There’s been some celebration about the growth of the game, but there’s also been a lot of handwringing and cogitating about the lack of quality that comes with expanding the tournament. Many expect big sides like Sweden, Norway, England, France, and (of course) the United States to win, the only question is by how much.

To paraphrase the concern as voiced on a recent World Football by our one-time reader Mani Djazmi: these uncompetitive games can turn off viewers. People will know what will probably happen and therefore won’t watch until later rounds when a few true contenders are left standing. This will lead to lower ratings which leads to lower revenue which leads to a lower perceived value for the women’s game.

Better then to have the best teams play the best teams, and leave potential punching bags like New Zealand and Haiti, Zambia and Vietnam out of it.

But to me disliking the bully or wincing at blow outs is only one view of the situation.

Rather than viewing it as bullies and blowouts creating hurt feelings and lost value, what if we re-center around the perspective of those teams who are out on the field.

The teams who face Aurora might well be frustrated not to be winning trophies, but they are (like Aurora) largely college and High School kids who want to get better. Who are there most of all, to learn. They get a chance to spend a few summer weeks as semi-professional athletes with big crowd and televised matches and newly built friendships.

Batcheba Louis and Alex Greenwood in action

The teams who are on the field are stepping up to a challenge. We could continue to focus on the teams that are likely going to win, but we could also set that aside and talk about how great it is to see a team like Nicholas Delpine’s Haiti stepping up to a challenge. Connecting women from a global diaspora to support their home country, learn, and grow.

Sports, and soccer in particular, isn’t just about who won and who lost. It’s about after the final whistle too.

If you boil it down to the end result then, yes, you don’t need to report much on Haiti because they don’t have much of a chance. But by that same logic, since the vast majority of teams around the world aren’t getting hardware this year, we probably could write about only two-three clubs in every country and ignore the rest. It’s the theory of the Superleague all over again, but more well-intentioned than that ill-begotten cash grab.

But if you consider what comes after the final whistle, then it’s not about who won or lost. It’s not even about why they won or lost. It’s about how teams learn from what they experience.

You can learn by doing like having success against the greatest opponents. But success need not be defined by winning: Sherly Jeudy set up some solid chances for her teammates in Haiti’s game against England. Those are great, and, knowing Sherly, she’ll look for ways to make them better.

And you can learn by seeing: there’s no shortage of great examples in your opponents. Whether you faced off against Tianna Harris or Cat Rapp, you can learn from what they did. After all, they aren’t your enemies, they’re just your opposition.

If it seems like your team doesn’t learn anything after these lopsided games, then you have learned one thing: you need a new coach.

And in addition to all those fuzzier outcomes, occasionally surprises and upsets happen and we’re all better for it (to wit the long standing giants in Norway getting beaten by New Zealand in the league opener, or the team that matched Aurora last year failing to make the playoffs this year).

In reality, everyone, every day, can only control two things: their actions, and their attitude.

The risks of blow out games (whether to goliaths of women’s soccer or a fictional team of orphans) may appear great. The actions of your beloved side may not match your opponents. But ultimately your attitude affects how you respond, and how you learn from the experience.

Bring your best attitude.