See you on the pitch!

Coach Jay. That’s what the boys will call me on Monday and Thursday nights and on Saturday and Sunday mornings for the next two months. It is spring soccer season and this is my sixth session coaching Hud’s team and my third coaching Tasman. For the next eight weeks, my life is riddled with mesh ball and equipment bags, line up cards, snack sign up sheets and daily emails to the parents reminding them of game times and locations.

While this all may sound like the cusp of complaint, I actually totally dig it. We were never a hockey family and my true love, basketball is slowly burning in the recesses of my son’s athletic brains, waiting to burst out in their later years (Hi Jason? It’s me optimism, get a grip), so soccer was a natural choice to get our boys involved in team sports. And thankfully, even without a competitive bone in their respective bodies, both Hudson and Tasman really enjoy it.  

There is just something about arriving at the large park where the games are held that I adore. The sun is shining (usually, although I am betting many a parent have spent a rain soaked sideline, freezing their asses off, wondering why they ever had kids in the first place), golden labs (A North Toronto canine requirement) are barking and kids are racing around trying to find their Sharpied initials on their soccer balls.

As this is my ninth coaching session, I have become a bit of a staple in the soccer community. I know many of the kids, lots of the parents – from the doucher blackberry dads and the Starbuckian, Frye bootian moms, both never once looking up to see their kid score, to the earnest portable chair toting couples loving every single second of their child’s soccer experience – the whole thing just makes me wince and smile at the exact same time.  

My boys love it as well. They feel a bit special being the coach’s son and occasionally crack wise because of it (bench meet son) and also because it affords that one-on-one time that everyone involved secretly craves sometimes. They also get a slush after the game and the added bonus of any size slush and a candy if they score. Before you start judging, I have only had to cough up once on the big sugar promise.  

I have many other tales about my experiences with aggressive co-coaches or the truly, come-out-of-the-shell, Disneyesque kid sport moments I have the pleasure of witnessing and being a huge part of, or the frustrations of trying to engage my own boys in a physical activity without them stopping to play imaginary Lego during the middle of a game. But that will have to wait, I have some line up cards to figure out. 

See you on the pitch!