Ready To Step It Up?

I was on my FaceBook account this morning. It’s such a great way to keep in touch with all those losers from your past that you never really liked in the first place. The biggest plus is that you don’t actually have to meet any of them. The other day I got a message from a girl who was on our cheerleading team in highschool. I remember she was always so aggressive. She used to start so many fights but never finished them because she had attention deficit disorder.

Anyway, knowing of my reputation as an expert, Sonia was asking me if I knew any ways to help get her daughter to the next level. So I decided I better take in a game or two before I made my recommendations. I could see the problem right away; she was stuck in a time warp!

Sure, you are going to get a little bit of an advantage by baiting the referees throughout the game, but everyone does that these days! Sonia was pretty good at running along the line behind the assistant ref and hollering “offside” in his ear whenever one of their players got into our half. I’d say she was scoring a pretty decent 30% in terms of goading the hapless old guy into raising his flag in error, but she was being totally outplayed by a dad on the other sideline who was using classics like “Hey ref, you’re missing a good game” and “Someone’s going to get hurt if you don’t get the cards out” to keep the center ref on the back foot.

At half time I sat her down and told her that cutting edge parents don’t use those old tactics! If she wants to play premier she’s going to have to step up her game and start goading the kids on the other team instead of the ref. To be fair to her, she played a pretty good second half. I could see the kid on the other team flinching when Sonia hollered “She’s slow and got no left foot” as her own daughter approached her. She followed up quickly with a “These are just select kids!” and then a neatly executed “Back to AYSO for these losers”. Then, with a few minutes to play her team gets awarded a dubious PK as her daughter flops in the box. As the hush falls over the crowd Sonia calls out “Hit it low! The keeper’s too fat to get down to it”! With the ball nestling in the back of the net and the tears welling up in the 12 year old goalkeeper’s eyes I was so proud of our latest super soccer parent!