Oh Come On!

Get real you guys! It’s Christmas day for goodness sake and some of you are still on here sounding off about kid’s soccer! Don’t you get it? It’s a game!

You’d never see me online on a day as important as this. After a light foot skills workout with their private trainer this morning my kids settled down for a traditional family day. OK, we did have to forego the turkey dinner in favor of a light pasta meal which is high in carbohydrates and light in fat, but that was only because the spring season is only four months way. Other than that we didn’t have anything to do with soccer the way you fanatics do. My kids were far too engrossed with their new cleats, shinnies, headbands, warm-ups, and equipment bags to think about soccer!

After dinner we all settled down together as a family to watch some good old fashioned, American-as-apple-pie TV – ‘The Ajax Coaching Method’ and “100 Great Premiership Goals”. We’re not even thinking of getting online right now – we are far too busy writing up our list of new year resolutions – which will definitely include one about not getting caught up in the game the way you nut-cases do.

The Best Club In Michigan

Some fool over on mLive was on pontificating on about how the Wolves were the best club in Michigan! Everybody else knows that the Wolves suck. I fell for their tactics when they talked me into leaving our first club with the promise of state cups and national titles. State cup my ass! All they did was recruit even more players and my kid was left on the bench. They also told me they were great talent spotters! Talent spotters my ass! They couldn’t tell that my kid was way better than any of the others they brought in and I was so happy when we left to go a club with a great reputation - Vardar!

Great reputation my ass! Turns out Vardar sucks too! The only reputation they have is for swallowing up little clubs, changing their name to Vardar North by Northwest, and charging twice the money for the same tired old coaches wearing Vardar Nation t-shirts. Macedonian mafia if ever I saw it. Delighted that we left for the highly skilled Waza. Reefer, Splif and Bong are all fantastic coaches!

Highly skilled my ass! Only thing my kid learned was how to henna rinse and dreadlock his hair. I suppose he did come home from every practice happy as larry but I think that was more to do with the fumes that were wafting in the air than the quality of the coaching. Waza Schmaza! We’ll be so much better off with Troy Elite.

Troy Elite my ass! I had to put my kid in therapy as he suffered an identity crisis when he wasn’t sure if he played for Troy Elite, FC Nova, Michigan Elite or the Premier Soccer Group. The whole episode was a real spit in the face. We thought about transferring to the Novi Jags but just before we signed up they changed to the Michigan Jags and we couldn’t face the same nightmare all over again. So happy we found our spiritual home at Grand Rapids Crew Juniors.

Spiritual home my ass! It turns out they only have one good team at the U15 boys age group and the rest are all west side farm boys who wouldn’t recognize a superstar like my kid if he jumped up and bit them.

Anyway, I think it’s beginning to look like we’ve got it all sorted out and next year should be great!! We’ve been winter training and discussing our options with a really top notch club called the Wolves!

New Shin Guard Rule

I’m thinking of consulting a lawyer after my kid had yet another nightmare game during the high school season. This time round I’m afraid I can’t blame his poor performance on the sorry state of the gene pool that his real father provided. No, this time round the blame is laid fairly and squarely at the door of the MHSAA with their hair brained support of the national idea of forcing our kids into adopting ever more stringent safety methods, such as the new shin guard rule.

Things started off badly when I pulled the straps on his protective headgear too tight and it was cutting of the blood flow to his rarely used brain. Then, with all the rain we’ve had, the humidity was misting up his Rip Hamilton protective face mask to the point where he couldn’t see very well and he ran into the far side goal post on one his rare forays up field. Fortunately the school had installed those heavily padded goalposts designed to protect numbskulls like my boy. Late in the second half his giant size shin guards slipped out of place and he tripped over them tearing his ACL in the process. That didn’t help his play much but at least the coach was now paying attention to him as he screamed “Sub out, you moron!”. As he left the field the elastic in his regulation NCAA approved jock strap broke, and his mandatory FIFA approved cup fell out revealing his manhood in all its glory to the assembled fans. The coach commented that he now understood why my boy didn’t have any balls going into the tackle.

Your Kids Suck!

Most of you parents who have kids that play on the lesser teams will be smart enough to know that youth soccer is like the rest of life – it’s tough – so I think you’ll all find it easy to accept that, compared to my daughter, your kids suck. My daughter plays for the Vardar Elite Gator Eating Wolves U5 girls in the Midwest Regional Academy Kindergarten League (Premier Division). We rock!

Over the winter we won a tournament featuring teams from as far away as Macomb County; so that effectively makes it a national championship. Actually, now that I think about it, one of teams we hammered had a girl from Canada on the roster, so really that makes us International World Champions. As a reward I presented the coach with a new stop watch so that he can be a little bit more careful in ensuring that my daughter gets enough minutes on the field to ensure we win every game. I appreciate that he might want to rest his hot shot once in a while but not before we have a twelve goal cushion.

Good coaching is the key to our success. The coach runs a fantastic system which he calls “playing to our strengths” but we parents call it “let’s make sure the fat kid plays in goal”. I think the coach has responded well to our lawyer’s letter regarding the way he spoke to our daughter last fall.

Even though she’s only in first grade my daughter tried out for her high school team this spring but the bitch of a coach only offered her a spot on the JV roster – so next year we’ll be using schools of choice to put that coach right in her place! To get over that minor disappointment we’ve purchased my daughter a spot on the ODP roster this summer.

We parents have just as important a role to play in the team’s development as the coach, so myself and a number of the other moms have formed a cheer leading squad to encourage the girls. Our best routines are the “Outrageous Laugh” for when the other team screws up, the “Call It Both Ways” for the biased, old, fat, blind referees the league employs, and the “Good Boot” for when one of our girls hoofs the ball up the field to no one in particular. We call our cheerleaders “The Intimidators”.

Of course all this success comes at a price and I had to beat my daughter with a stick to get her into the car on Saturday morning. She wanted to stay home to watch Hannah Montana and play with her Barbie dolls, but I think she knows there will be plenty time for that when she gets home from therapy.