My Ignorance

Blue's Blues and My Own Ignorance

By John Taylor; 2007 August 15

I have not mentioned eight-year-old Tomaso's soccer games this year, in spite of the disproportionate amount of my time spent there, because the subject is painful. Fortunately, ignorance is bliss. I know next to nothing about soccer.

My career as a soccer player was as ephemeral as any player in history. In High School I was heavily committed to Judo, and the only team sport that appealed to me was soccer. I like using my feet, not my hands, for some reason. In Grade Ten I tried out for the High School Soccer team. "What position do you want to play?" asked the coach. Defenseman, I replied. "Go stand over there, we will have a practice game." So I stood there, and the ball stayed on the other side of the field for the whole scrimmage. I never came near it. When it was over, the coach came up to me and said, "Sorry, you did not make the team." So that was it, my soccer career, indeed my entire experience with team sports, was over.

But even for someone who knows as little as I do about soccer, I cannot help but notice how badly things are going for Tomaso's team. The score at the end of last night's game, for instance, was Whites 10, Blues 0. Tomaso's Blue team have not -- as far as I have seen -- scored a goal all year. Tomaso plays goalie for the first half, and usually defenseman for the second half. I keep telling him that he is fortunate as goalie to be getting so much practice. The other teams' goalies have got to stand around doing nothing for the whole time. The boredom must be terrible. He has more experience in one game than they get all year. This is small consolation, though, and every time I have an awful time persuading him to get dressed and come out to the game.

For Tomaso the only bright spot is his friendship with Tommy. They can talk during half time, and after the game Tomaso always goes over to Tommy's house where they have a big dog named Indiana, a powerful video game machine, and other amusements.

I strongly feel what a blessing my ignorance is as I stand by Tommy's parents, Cathy and Terry. They are cursed, knowing how things could and should be out there. Cathy is an experienced coach for a girl's league in Toronto, and Terry only five years ago was a goalie in an adult soccer league. He is my height but stocky, built like a tank; he was also a top bicyclist and a player in the OHL. I do not know if the OHL is a semi-pro league but I have heard of them, so they must be pretty high up there. This being Canada, I do not expect that you get onto one of their teams by raising your hand and saying, "Sure, I'll play."

Their Tommy, like mine, is no doubt also sorely discouraged by the humiliating defeats the blues are suffering. He looks completely lost, standing forlorn, looking down at his feet searching for bugs, or gazing up at the clouds, or over at the green forest nearby, anywhere but at the ball. When he can, he chats with Tomaso. On defense he would be very happy if the ball stayed on the other side of the pitch. Unfortunately, this does not happen very often with this team. Poor Terry, his father, was tearing out his hair last night. He contrasts Tommy's fecklessness with his own younger days in sport.

"When I was his age you could not keep me away from the ball or the puck. My coaches tried as long as they could to get me to play a position but in the end they just gave up and told me to just go after the ball. So I did, and I did not disappoint."

At one point I mentioned to Cathy how little I know about soccer, and she said, Oh, you should go onto such and such a league's website, they have a whole deal explaining the rules, the techniques, what parents can do to help out their young athletes, and on and on. I drew back in horror. That is the last thing I want to do. I enjoy my ignorance. I witness the frustration that Terry and Cathy go through every game and there is no way I am going to suffer that too. As Anatole France said, "A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance." I cannot say that I am happy, but at least my ignorance puts me in less agony than otherwise.

Their coach is, as they say, an ordinary soccer mom, a mother of one of the girls on the team. Myself, I see nothing wrong with how she is running things. But, then again, I am ignorant. I did notice right away that she does not seem to have the leadership skills of the other coaches, most of whom have several other adults standing around the bench helping them. "Are they assistant coaches?" I once asked Cathy. No, they are just parents helping out.

Early on, the Blue coach missed a game. It looked like the match would be cancelled, but then suddenly all the other parents jumped in and got involved. Cathy coached the team, and one father even stood behind the goal offering what seemed to me to be very sage and much needed advice to the goalie. I wish I could say that Blue won that game, or even scored a goal. No, but the score was less shameful, at least, and the kids seemed to learn more and felt less crestfallen, supported by all those parents.

Last night the members of the Blue team did not turn out in force. Who can blame them? Just before the game, I arrived to find the other Tommy sitting by, head in hand, with only three players on the pitch. It turned out that he had ridden to the game on his father's bike, and then a shoe turned up missing. Terry had to bike home and get the shoe. So, with Tomaso there, the Blues had to play a man short to start off with, until Terry got back with the shoe. Meanwhile the White team, basking in success, had twice as many players at their bench. This meant that they got rest periods, while the Blues had to play unrelieved, so called "ironman" soccer.

Whenever there was a Blue throw-in, Terry would shout, "Down the line!" What does that mean?, I inquired. It seems that the Blue players were on the wrong side. So I translated, shouting, "Go onto the other side!" Whenever the Whites scored a goal, Terry crinkled up in frustration, saying that they were lining up wrong. Um, maybe there are different rules for these little guys, I speculated. No, no, no. This coach gets what she deserves... I wondered how the other teams line up after a goal has been scored on them. Ruefully, I realized that this has not happened yet because the Blues have never scored a goal, and probably never will this season. Three more games to go. Only three more games.

At one point, the other Tommy came across the field, shouting that he had forgotten his water bottle. Terry winded back and tried to slide it across the pitch to him. The bottle tumbled, burst and splashed most of the liquid out before it got to Tommy. I did not understand what had happened. It seems that Terry had forgotten where he was; this was not hockey, you cannot slide a bottle across grass the way you can across ice.

That kind of thing happens a lot here, I notice. This is Canada. Hockey terminology creeps into the mouths of coaches, often to the great mirth of the parents sitting in deck chairs on the other side of the rink, I mean the pitch. Last night, for example, even the referee told the other Blue goalie, "You cannot pick up the ball when you are outside of the crease." She meant of course the goalie's something or other, another term. Not the crease. If I were not so ignorant I could tell you what the correct term is. There was a goal kick against this offending goalie, and of course the referee placed the ball incorrectly. Fortunately, the score was already so lopsided it made no difference.

I tried to be encouraging to the Blues, and not to criticize the coach. Terry tried too, and it was much harder for him. One time I did slip up, though. At half time, she sent a player (it was her own daughter, I realized later) to go pick up the team treats from the kiosk on the other side of the huge soccer facility. "Hmm," I commented to Terry,

"If this were any other coach I think she would have sent a parent on this errand, rather than tiring out one of her own players to run that long distance during half time."

I regretted saying that later. When I got home, Marie told me why the coach had missed that game earlier in the season. It seems that she is battling with cancer and had to undergo chemotherapy that day. Good excuse. My mother died of cancer, and they must have made the chemotherapy of today a lot less onerous than back in the late 1970's when Mom underwent it. This casts the Blue blues in an entirely different light. As Desdemona said, "O heavy ignorance! thou praisest the worst best." My ignorance is worse, it praises the best worst.