Mike the Eyeguy shares his inspirational story as an aging, late-to-life soccer convert. On the eve of the World Cup finale, I join the testimony to the game’s transformative power.
I am not an athlete. Kids in grade school used to ask me to solve their playground disputes about trivia but never to join their teams. I remember once in Second Grade when I had to arbitrate a raging debate about whether polar bears were really white. This is my high calling, knowing and expressing information, but not doing anything particularly artful with a ball.
I did not enjoy little league, and to add insult to injury, the last team I played for was sponsored by the Odd Fellows. That is no way to inspire pride in a kid afraid of catching a fly-ball. I made one steal in kid-league basketball at the YMCA, then promptly double dribbled on my fast break because I wasn’t sure what to do with the ball. In pee-wee football, I had one great practice as a linebacker, sacking the QB 3 or 4 times, but the “coach” insisted that I play D-Line. In my one and only down played in a real game, I got pushed off the line by a kid a quarter of my size. I have no halcyon days of youth sports. I was never good, always intimidated, usually scared of having to make a play, and I did not have fun. The highlight of my adolescent athletic career was basketball in the driveway with my dad. We were good competition for each other, and played every day.
Once at Harding, sometime bizarre happened. I started rooming with 3 soccer players. I knew very, very little of the sport, but the next year was a World Cup cycle. They taught me, and I learned. I still was not fast, or strong, or tall, but those guys taught me how to play - everything. We played racquetball and golf. We ran together, headed balls around our suite, rode bikes, and I grew in wisdom and stature, a little.
I watched them play competitive soccer, but I never joined in a game with them. I would have been terribly overmatched, and they would have had no joy or sense of accomplishment from humiliating me. Even so, I held these things in my heart. I played intramural softball in these years, and for the time ever in my sad athletic life, my team selected me as an All-Star for the season. Imagine that. I played catcher in slow-pitch softball and made All-Star. I think it was mostly for team spirit and trash-talking Jimmy Allen from the dugout. I was the shortest, slowest, smartest person on my All-Star team and couldn’t wait to get that experience behind me.
During those years, too, I went on a summer campaign to Scotland. One day, we played the teens in Glenrothes in a pick-up soccer game. They beat us, but something started to purr in my chest. It was my first pick-up game, and I did not suck. All those nights of heading soccer balls in a dorm room started to pay off.
A few years later, in Romania, my wife and I played another pick-up game against a European side, and again, I did not suck. My wife, who played intercollegiate rugby, likewise did not suck. I can’t tell you how proud I was of us. We had taken a deflated soccer ball and a travel pump and broke it out in the little village of Zorani. This very rural village, without electricity, had cleared a pitch in the woods, and built regulation goals from rough-hewn cedar trees. We played there, with our ball, and held our own. We left the ball with a kid named Pietre, who approached me later, having practiced his English for the moment, and said, “Thank you for the balloon.” The beautiful game, indeed.
Back in the South for three summers, I would play soccer with my Space Camp trainees in break times. I took no glory from schooling 6th graders, but I did earn their loyalty. Once, a kid challenged me for a loose ball and smashed into my chest. I felt his nose break and led him to the nurses’ station where those fine ladies castigated me for rough play. The kid, blood pouring from both nostrils, said, “It’s not Jeff’s fault! It’s not Jeff’s fault!” I loved that kid and ever and always will praise that spirit and toughness.
The pinnacle, however, came on home soil. Our young professionals group from church was participating in the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life, here in Jackson. At Relay, the groups stay up all night to keep members on a walking track for 12 hours, to raise awareness and money for cancer research. In the wee hours, around 2:00 a.m., when most groups retired to their tents for casual conversation, some friends and I started a pick-up game in the green grass in-field at our venue. We set up some goals and went three-on-three. I ended up playing a striker’s role against one of my good friends, Stephen, who intimidated the mess out of me. He played intercollegiate baseball and is a black-belt, the son of a martial arts instructor. He’s tall, fast and good-looking. We had squared off before in ultimate frisbee, and he ate my lunch. Turns out, however, that he is soccer-stupid. Drawing on years of osmosis, Harding training, my European career, and a sudden sense of competence, I destroyed him. We eventually called a merciful end to our tromping victory, and he was furious. At first, I though that he was toying with me, the nerd, but I watched him get more and more serious and aggressive. I actually beat an athlete, in a sport, with a ball. It may never happen again, and I will cherish the memory forever.
Our 17 month old daughter has had one kind of ball in the backyard, a round one with panels. She knows what to do with it, too. Maybe I’ll get to be a late-in-life coach myself and redeem our girls’ experience with sports.
Many thanks to the guys of Armstrong Hall, the teens in Glenrothes, the church in Timisoara, my wife, U.S. Space Camp and my friend Stephen. I owe you all much love and gratitude for overcoming my sad athletic boyhood.
Also, I want to thank publically my dad. Despite my protests, he always made me get back out on the field. He always made me practice, even though I did not play very much. He always taught and coached me, his intellectual son, to play, and hundreds of afternoons in our driveway playing basketball probably kept me from giving up completely. My outside jumper is still pretty good.
