FullRideSoon

Maximum Performance

2010-10-15T07:20:00.000-07:00

Got the little one up early this morning and popped her into a cold shower to help clear away the Ambien she takes to make sure she gets a full night’s sleep. Maybe she should have taken her Ritalin before the shower and that would have calmed her tantrum a little, but as usual I didn’t give it to her until it was too late. It hadn’t quite kicked in by the time she came to the table so I caved a little bit and gave her the Fruit Loops she wanted instead of the power breakfast I had prepared, but I poured on some Muscle Milk and gave her a protein shake to help wash down her multi-vitamin and L-Arginine. I drove her to school so that she doesn’t have to share the bus with the kids who have colds, head lice, or mal-adjusted parents, and I reminded her to act-up with the teacher in the first 15 minutes so that she gets made to sit away from all the bug carriers.

The teachers won’t administer the kid’s medications these days so I had to pop down to the school a half-hour before gym class and give her a couple of Tylenol so she could exercise through the pain of her Osgood-Schattlers. Then I went in again at lunchtime to give her a Five Hour Energy for the afternoon session and picked her up at 2.30 which is perfect timing to get her fed full of high-fiber, full grain pasta before practice starts.

I let the coach know that she had already taken her Gatorade Prime in the car on the way there and that her Gatorade Perform was in her bag. Normally I like to watch practice but I had to pop out to the store because we were out of Gatorade Recover and I wanted to have some by the time she finished. The coach was appreciative of my efforts and let me know that he himself had taken a couple of Cialis just in case it was of any interest to me.

When we got home I was going to give her some Natrol to help her focus on her school stuff but we decided to blow off her homework in favor of watching a documentary on the Discovery Channel about Barry Bonds and all the performance enhancing drugs the cheating rat took. I hope she understood the message I was trying to send her.

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The Sensitive Approach

2010-10-11T07:30:00.000-07:00

There’s a lot we parents can learn from the modern youth soccer coach regarding how best to handle difficult situations. Sometimes the sensitivity of these trained professionals is just awe-inspiring. However, I have to be honest and say that at first I wasn’t quite clued-in to our Highschool coach’s way of thinking when my eldest came and told me that she’d overheard him disparaging one of our freshmen during his regular flirt-fests with his three senior captains. But once I had spoken to him and received his wisdom it all became clear. It seems the coach believes it is important that his experienced girls understand that the ‘homely little geek’ freshman might not be able to perform at the big moments, and so her ‘bony little ass’ will be fixed to the bench during play-offs. That sort of caring attitude to ensure the little one doesn’t make a fool of her self has inspired me to take a leaf out of his book. So I’ve let all the parents know that the coach might not be able to perform at the big moments either, just like he couldn’t for me that time we both got carried away in a Holiday Inn Express at the Best of The Midwest Tournament in 2005. It’s good to pass on this sort of information because, as the coach says, a problem shared is a problem halved.

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Losing Streak

2010-10-08T12:02:00.000-07:00

A flurry of lawsuits have been issued following a recent high-school soccer match reports The Oregasmian newspaper in Portland. The game was played out on Thursday evening between the Sundown Shadows and the Adios Amigos, but was interrupted in the 22nd minute of the second half when a nude model from a local art class inadvertently strayed onto the field of play.

The Amigos have filed suit claiming that their winning streak of two and a half matches only came to an ignominious 12-0 end when the referee failed to spot that there were three balls on the field of play at the same time. They have applied to the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s parental over-reaction division to have the result overturned citing the clutching-at-straws clause in their league’s rules.

Meanwhile, three students from the Sundown team have filed suit against their Human Anatomy teacher citing charges of gross exaggeration. The teacher has countersued with her lawyer pointing out just how cold it was on Thursday evening.

The nude model has filed a claim against Portland Metal Fencing LLC for severe injuries sustained while making a hasty exit from the unfortunate incident. The company’s attorney has moved to have the charges decreed incompetent by virtue of the fact that the gender of complainant filing the suit, and the gender of the person leaping the fence are different.

Charges may also arise from two 90 year old women who were in the front row of the bleachers as the model made his/her exit. Apparently one of them had a stroke but the other couldn’t reach.

Sundown Athletic Director G.T.B Asilvalining was upbeat about the educational values of the incident pointing out that the students were being given a great insight into the long American tradition of harmless fun resulting in frivolous lawsuits.

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Bias and (in)competence.

2010-10-08T08:22:00.000-07:00

I got a bit of a shock to my system when I discovered that there might just be a debate going on in one of the soccer websites that I occasionally grace with my increasingly famous, media-friendly presence (http://www.examiner.com/soccer-in-seattle/satire-from-the-sidelines-soccer-mom). We need to nip this trend in the bud or else we might end up with a situation where these forums develop in the sort of place where our little dysfunctional community could come together and discuss the issues our game faces in a reasonable manner. People need to realize that the internet is specifically designed to allow us to savage each other, indulge in salacious gossip, shout down our detractors, and (most importantly) ridicule the efforts of pre-teen children. If we get any more of this trendy, lefty, liberal, discussion non-sense, we’re going to end up having a reasoned consideration of all the issues arising out of the unfortunate soccer ‘sex scandal’ situation I’ve been reading about and that’s the last thing anyone wants.

So anyway, the big ‘debate’ seems to be about the difference between ‘bias’ and ‘(in)-competence’. Now I’m just like every other red-blooded, right thinking, American who wants to compartmentalize everyone into their specific area – black/white, left/right, male/superior – but in this case I think it might just be possible to be multi-faceted.

For example, my girlfriend was telling me last night about her kid’s high school game. Apparently in the last minute the blind fat-ass ref called a PK against her kid for a totally innocuous challenge that was actually ten-feet outside the box when the little bitch on the other team threw herself to her knees faster than Monica in the oval office. The opposition only scored the kick after a re-take when the homer ref said the keeper moved off her line, three kids encroached, and our coach shouted “Scooby!” at the top of his voice just as the shooter was kicking. My girlfriend states that she was watching all three of those situations and none of them happened. She was so upset that she followed the ref to the parking lot, assured her daughter that it was not ‘just another game’, and taught all the girls on the team a few new swear words that they might find useful as their careers develop. So there you have it, 100% proof-positive that it is perfectly possible for a parent to be both biased and incompetent at the same time.

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The AD's Plan

2010-10-01T07:23:00.000-07:00

I know that for some of you the idea of the words “Athletic Director” and “Plan” appearing in the same sentence will be a bit of a surprise, but it seems that at Harebrayne High School over in Ecksklousion County such a bizarre circumstance might be about to come to pass. It seems that 43 years after the school’s last state championship – back when cow-tipping was still a varsity sport – they have been roused from their slumbers by the revelation that most of the board still did not know the AD’s name, even in spite of all that stuff in the media about the pole dancing club. Last night’s follow up school board meeting was a busy affair as over 50% of the entire school board actually showed up to hear the AD’s proposal to return the school to it’s former glory.

Step 1 will be for the school to resign from its membership of the BSTC Athletic Conference and seek membership of the Farm Boys and Hermits League in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It seems that, in spite of the fact that away games will now involve a 400 mile round trip, our AD feels that our school is much more aligned with these remote-from-reality schools than they are with the other members of the Big School Tough Competition conference. The AD went on to say that with 500 more kids than any other school in our new league we were bound to win something. This comment brought the enthusiastic audience to their feet with the school’s war cry of “Don’t Bet On It!” ringing around the room.

Step 2 is intended to bring further post season glory to the school’s soccer team after their unprecedented success last year when neighboring Krackhead High’s disqualification gave the school a berth in the second round of play offs for the first time in history. With the smell of success in his nostrils the AD is going for glory with his plan to close his school’s special education unit and end it’s policy of inclusion in the mainstream school system for any kids with difficulties. Packing these kids off to some special education unit on the other side of the county should drop the school roll by enough to merit a move down into Division II before the season kicks off. The AD’s position is that none of these retards, ding-bats, and social misfits are eligible to play sports anyway so why should they be included on our head count? In the longer term the AD feels that by removing the wheel chair access ramps, demonizing the gay students, and inciting a little creative racial tension a move to Division III is not out of the question. In the meantime, to celebrate their move to Division II, the school will supply each student with a spirit t-shirt emblazoned with their new catch phrase of “All For One, and One For All”.

A lone dissenting voice from the floor in the shape of the soccer boosters chairman was heard to suggest an alternative strategy of qualified coaches, stronger ties with the travel soccer community, and an inclusive educational focus, was shouted down as the crowd looked forward to receiving one of the tacky wooden trophies the MHSAA awards to schools who have stomped over everyone else and learned the life lessons we all get from participation in school sports.

My Kid Is Great......Again!

2010-09-27T09:01:00.001-07:00

After a little bit of a lull it looks like my kid is back to being the god-like-genius that my financial investment in him merits! No longer is he out in the wilderness where he was being roundly ignored by the high priests of soccer wisdom, but now, once more, he is being hailed by the grand order of college coaches as the new messiah of the world game. As fall has rolled around my inbox has begun to fill up with messages paying homage to the chosen one and hailing him as being a “key part of our recruiting plans”, an “outstanding prospect”, and “able to make an immediate impact”. As a parent, it’s gratifying to hear this from these wise men that can spot the chosen one in his fledgling stages. I’m particularly impressed with the coach who wrote to say he had recognized my son’s abilities during an academy game in which he wasn’t even rostered. The insight of these prophets is truly awe-inspiring.

Of course, each of them also understands that my particular savior is still a work in progress and, to a man, they have recognized that all he needs to do to reach his god-given potential is simply sign up for their up-coming, $300, winter recruiting camp. It actually feels like previous occasion that my son was hailed as a genius in the halcyon days of spring and these same priests were clamoring over each other to get the chosen one to sign up for their summer camps.

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My Season Begins

2010-09-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

And so the Labor Day holiday brings the official start of another soccer season. From here on out the travel programs can play league games and the high school boys can play their conference games. I’ve always thought that Labor Day was a bit of an un-American holiday given it’s socialist overtones and so I’m going to suggest we re-name it ‘Three Check Day’ since most of us travel soccer parents have already written three checks to their soccer club by the time the start of September rolls around. It’s funny how we are all desperate to write that first check at tryouts in June so that it feels like our kid really has made the team, but how we resent writing the third one because we still haven’t seen anything in return.

That’s not to suggest that financial problems are exclusive to travel soccer. Our boys high school program has had severe cut backs this season. The Varsity assistant coach is no longer going to be a paid post, the uniforms have to be used for a seventh season, the bus will only take the kids to away games leaving them to make their own way back, and the qualified athletic trainer has been replaced by a volunteer in the shape of Eddie Zabrinski’s uncle Benny who took a pre-veterinarian class in Idaho in 1968. With the money saved the school should be able to add another assistant coach to stand alongside the seven other 350lb train wrecks that “coach” the football program.

I guess the nightmare scenario for the school will be if un-qualified Benny treats an injured player by wrapping a flea invested seven year old jersey around an open cut and then leaves the disoriented kid to drive himself home to the suburbs from somewhere in downtown Flint, Michigan. Still, maybe the kid won’t live long enough to sue.

The tough part of any new season is, of course, scheduling. Monday night is the worst for us. I pick the little one up at 3pm and drop her at practice where she waits alone for 40 minutes with a pop-tart and Gatorade for the rest of her team to show up. I dash off to pick up the boy and get him to practice before taking the eldest to conditioning classes and get back for the little one hoping to goodness that I’m not last to arrive because I still worry over those stories about our coach and the U15 goalkeeper. We can usually swing back for the boy in time and if he jumps straight in the car we can normally stand the smell of his shinpads because it means we don’t have to listen to my eldest bitching about how long she’s had to wait. Of course it all goes FUBAR if the boy’s coach does his usual ‘extra running because that’s what I did back in the 70s’ thing. From there we like to sit down as a family and have a well-balanced, nutritious, meal from the drive-through at Taco-Bell. If I get home early enough the kids might just manage their homework while I wash the gear for tomorrow and try as hard as I can to remember what the coach said about us all needing to show a little more dedication.

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Guest Player

2010-08-02T11:21:00.000-07:00

My daughter’s coach has asked if I’d like to be his date at a society wedding in Rochester Hills next weekend. It’s a little bit of a late invitation because it seems his current girlfriend has decided to go back to her husband, leaving him without a partner for the wedding and without a left sided central defender for the fall season. I feel a little bit like how a guest player must feel at a showcase tournament and I’m wondering what tactics I should use?

Part of me thinks that I should agree but be really demanding and insist that he sends a cab to pick me, cover the cost of my room in the hotel, and take care of breakfast in the morning. I was even going to insist that I “play the whole game” but I’m worried that he’ll misinterpret that suggestion.

On the other hand I could just gratefully accept and then let him play me as he sees fit. I guess that might be more acceptable to the rest of the guests who won’t really be expecting to see me playing in some other girl’s position.

So I’m not quite sure what the protocol is because I guess there’s no fixed etiquette as last minute guests are brought in for lots of different reasons.

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Summer Soccer

2010-07-01T10:34:00.000-07:00

We are only a couple of weeks into the school summer break and the kids are driving me nuts already. For some reason they’ve gotten it into their head that this is some kind of soccer ‘off season’ which means they can lay in bed until after 7am when they should be out doing their daily conditioning run. I know it’s tough on them but recent events in South Africa have proven once-and-for-all that it is down to soccer parents like me to carve out a future for our national teams on the world stage. Lord knows that the so-called experts with their “Project 2010” thing haven’t exactly brought home the bacon have they? So move over you guys and accept that we soccer parents are the solution instead of the problem you have been making us out to be.

Summer afternoons are, of course, the perfect time for college showcase tournaments! I love to pull up my fancy lawn chair with the sunshade canopy, cold drinks holder, and battery powered fan, at the side of a soccer field where 22 desperate teenagers are ignoring all the ideals of team play as they sweat buckets to individually impress some pimply 20 year old assistant associate volunteer coach from a D6 school in The Edge of Oblivion, Idaho. However, there seems to be some problem for my kids with playing soccer in the hottest part of a 90-degree day. They never seem to show their best in these summer showcases. I wonder what the problem could be?

But like all kids they are smart enough to use the opportunity to get me to shell out on all the latest gear. My eldest daughter has even gone so far as to ask me to get her a sports bra. Apparently she thinks it will help her to “stop jiggling” when she runs with the ball. I told her she won’t get a second look from any of these college coaches with that kind of attitude.

Meanwhile my boy is glued to the TV watching the South African Vuvuzela Symphony Orchestra going through its paces at some obscure sporting event. It’s some crazy game where offside doesn’t matter and putting the ball into the net doesn’t seem to count. It kind of puts our problems in perspective.

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From Your Super Soaraway Sun Newspaper

2010-06-28T12:16:00.000-07:00

Don Fabio Crapello has failed in his bid to become the first pizza tosser to be made a Knight of the Realm and is now likely to face the axe of her Britannic Majesty, Queen Elizabeth Borden. In a foolhardy bid to revolutionize a nation’s 44-year obsession with repeating a feat of immense luck, Crapello introduced a distinctly Italian approach by encouraging senior players to pork each other’s girlfriends and to surrender when the going got tough. His Latin methodology did not sit well with traditional English characteristics of thinking you’ve done all the work in the qualifiers and believing you are as good as this newspaper built you up to be.

A period of national mourning has been announced in England whilst Scotland, Wales and Ireland will introduce a program of street parties amid scenes of unbridled joy. In a related development hundreds of English ex-pat soccer coaches in the United States have suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth and the blogosphere. In the meantime the whole UK will dust itself down, pick itself up, and look forward to a Brit winning Wimbledon.

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The Original Soundtrack

2010-06-16T07:24:00.000-07:00

So the World Cup came back to Borden Park on Saturday. It was here in this suburban Detroit park that teams playing their matches at the Silverdome would practice during the 1994 tournament. How well I remember trying to catch Hagi’s attention in the hope that he’d show me his ball skills.

For this year’s World Cup one of the local clubs had arranged for Borden to present a big screen showing of the game in which we summoned up the spirit of 1776 and 1950 to take on the mighty-in-their-own-mind English and their British Bulldog coach with his Italian accent. It was such a melting pot of cultures as traditional African vuvuzela horns, fashioned from cheap plastics in China, were sold at inflated prices in a classic example American exploitation. As I shelled out my greenbacks I truly felt I was part of what the World Cup has come to represent in 2010.

As I laid my Burberry rug out on the grass and settled down to watch the game, the sound of the local kids blowing their vuvuzelas carried me across the miles and I wondered what they would sound like in the cauldron of the stadium in which our boys prepared to do battle. Even as the English scored their first and last goal I was wondering what a vuvuzela would sound like ringing across the plains of the Serengeti. I wondered what a vuvuzela would sound like in the hands of a magnificent Zulu warrior calling his brothers to arms. But as the second half kicked off I was beginning to wonder what a vuvuzela would sound like shoved firmly up the arse of the pain-in-the-butt 'fans' ruining the frickin’ game.

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It's All Balls

2010-06-15T08:18:00.000-07:00

OK, enough already! Will you all please just get off my kids’ back? The result today had nothing to do with her! Yes, I know she may have given the impression that all six of their goals were the result of her having the hand/eye co-ordination of an English goalkeeper, but please, stop the cries of “Sub-out, retard”. There is no way that a highly trained, elite premier, super academy, ECNL, Divison-1-bound kid like mine would ever make a mistake. So it must have been that new Adidas ball.

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Out Of State, Out Of (Our) Mind

2010-05-30T18:49:00.000-07:00

So, Memorial weekend rolls around once again and we honor our servicemen in the traditional way by making fools of ourselves at youth sports tournaments all across the land of the free and the home of the self-centered. With winter well and truly behind us, we Michiganders like to leave our local rivals behind by driving six hundred miles or so south where we get to play exotic teams like Michigan Rush, Michigan Hawks, Michigan Chill and Michigan Express. I wonder where all the Ohio, Illinois and Indiana teams are this weekend? Detroit, I guess.

Still there’s something fun about frying ourselves in the first really hot weekend of the year. All that pasty white flesh turning brighter and brighter red as we work our way towards the semi-finals safe in the knowledge that the locals will invoke some obscure tournament rule that knocks us out on the fifth level of the tie-break decision making process.

The difference between the women’s game and men’s soccer comes sharply into focus as the girls stand patiently in long lines to the ladies rest room while the guys are done in no time at all and emerge with the sort of self satisfied smile that comes from the realization that the ability to pee standing up is your one advantage in life. I’ve made many an unfortunate ‘friendship’ over the years by being stuck beside some too-much-information type mother of three as we inch our way forward in the line for a call of nature. I well remember one girl who was dancing on her tippy-toes murmuring ‘mommy daddy mommy daddy’. I figured she was either excited to have made the final or was realizing she wasn’t going to make it to the head of the line in time.

For some reason this weekend is also the time a lot of us moms decide to try and dress like we are twenty years younger than we really are. The number of mature women squeezed into bikini tops that are far too small for them is breath taking. It’s almost as if they think that the men folks will be even more attracted to them if they appear to have four boobs instead of just two.

After the games we get to go back to the over-priced hotel mandated by the tournament organizers and marvel at how ill-prepared it is possible to be for “welcoming” a couple of hundred excitable kids. But it’s all forgotten as we take the field once again, harangue the refs, abuse the kids, and remember what this holiday weekend is really all about.

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New Policy

2010-05-27T06:42:00.000-07:00

So we have come to my favorite time of year in Michigan youth soccer. The spring season culminates with the boy’s State Cup Finals. The finalists were decided last weekend when everyone hitchhiked up to Saginaw (little S&G reference for all you sixties stoners out there) and, although the quarters and semis are actually over, it feels like they are still being played out on the local on-line forum where the traditional parental sport of ‘refusing to accept the result’ is in full flow.

The last two teams in each of the seven different age groups will fight for the right to call themselves ‘State Cup Champions” for a whole year! Except, of course, the U13 Girls who also have their State Cup in the spring, and for some uniquely hair-brained Michigan reason they will only be fighting for the chance to be State Cup Champions for about four months.

Like most folks, however, I’m absolutely livid that this year’s finals are going to be played on that perfect surface in the air-conditioned, up lighted, confines of the finest indoor soccer arena in North America. As I reluctantly take my seat in one of the 2,000 tiered seats with a perfect view I’ll be reminding every one the State Cup finals should be played in the searing heat with us parents huddled around the rock hard surface and long grass in Farmington Hills (although you have to park in Novi and walk if you want to have any chance of seeing the games). It just won’t be the same without at least one of the games being interrupted by a lightning storm.

The big problem is that from the high of State Cup finals it’s only six days to the low of tryouts for next season where we'll have the ritual torture of kids being cut from teams where they won State medals just the previous weekend. And I know it works both ways with kids voluntarily leaving teams that just took them all the way too. The outcome is that Michigan sends it’s teams off to the Region II Tournament with the solid, team building, all-for-one/one-for-all core of a group of kids who have already been cut or who have already jumped ship.

So to overcome this delicate situation we’ve come up with the idea of not telling the kids they have been cut so that they don’t get discouraged! And coaches will not be allowed to ask their best kids if they are definitely coming back next season to prevent them acting like dicks when their superstars take off to play with someone else’s Academy! How’s that for a solution to a difficult problem? We’ve decided to call this ridiculous new, un-enforceable and hopefully quickly repealed policy “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.

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Its All Politics

2010-05-07T10:29:00.000-07:00

So after years with the same club my daughter has just been told at tryouts that she’s been cut from the team! I’m devastated and I can’t face the thought of facing all those smug bitches that have been waiting for this moment. The only thing worse than a smug soccer player is a smug soccer player’s mother. Hopefully the totally dignified way that I have behaved over the years will stand me in good stead.

I think the one thing that will be clear to every fair and balanced person is that this is obviously a political decision. The facts are there for all to see. She made the team every year under the Bush administration and now she gets cut under the watch of this Obama character. What more can I say? Now I know that I didn’t vote for this evasive foreign jihadist but I was quite prepared to accept the democratic process and give the office of President of the United States it’s due respect, even though the incumbent is a lazy, socialist, sponging, terrorist.

I gave him the benefit of the doubt when he personally organized the fall of the big banks, and I was still with him even though he himself started the war in Iraq and used his Satanic powers to summon up Hurricane Katrina. Even recently when he set fire to that oil rig in the gulf and helped this Faisal chappy to drive his JAPANESE vehicle into Times Square I still stood by him. And I know that the evidence on the internet that he shot JFK and faked the moon landings is beginning to build up, but I still gave him the benefit of the doubt. Until this week that is, when he started paying back the soccer moms who didn’t vote for him by arranging to get their kids cut.

So at least I was able to console my daughter with the knowledge that it was nothing to do with her and that the true benefit of the polarization of American society is that she’ll always have someone else to blame.

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With God On Our Side

2010-04-25T08:28:00.000-07:00

Not a great game for the Michigan Cougars the other night. We play in the adult women’s league but there wasn’t much grown up play going on. The problem is that two of our players aren’t getting along very well at the moment even though they’ve always been the best of friends before now and actually go to the same church.

It seems it all started to go down hill when one of them posted a note on her Facebook status saying that God had abandoned America and would continue to turn his back on us until we woke up, got back to true American values, and dumped this people-defying, socialist President by sending him back to whatever Muslim country it was that he came from. This was at exactly the same time as the other one was posting a note on her Facebook thanking God for giving us a President who actually delivers what he says he would despite the flak he endures, and for restoring American values of inclusion, compassion, and respect around the world.

Since then they’ve been torturing each other about whether God is Blue or Red. Well, maybe not exactly torturing each other, but I guess that depends on how you define torture.

So, when the game started, one of the girls decided she wasn’t going to share the ball with anyone else and was determined to do it all herself. When she finally scored, her teammate insisted she share her goal with the rest of the team. The game itself was getting a little bit physical so one girl decided she’d better sub-out to avoid getting injured because she doesn’t have any health insurance. Her teammate told her to come back on when the new universal healthcare kicks in. That remark was a bit of red flag to a blue bull.

I guess it didn’t help that we were playing a team of Iraqi ex-pats who are just learning the game. The blue girl wanted to get in, kick their butts and get out of there as fast as we could, while the red girl felt we had a responsibility to stick around and help them develop.

While we’ve been squabbling amongst ourselves the rest of the league has been leaving us behind.

If only one of girls could look at the play of the other and say “Good idea” instead of criticizing everything the other side does as a matter of policy then we might start to consider ourselves as a team again. Of course, that’s not how things happen in politics…..I mean religion…….I mean soccer.

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From Our Athletic Director

2010-04-15T10:57:00.000-07:00

As the spring sports season gets fully underway, this is an opportune moment to remind all our High School Student Athletes and their wacko parents of some of the key points included in our VWLI Athletic Policy document which you were forced to sign months before you cared about the content:

1 – The Vaguely Worded Loosely Interpreted Policy is the cornerstone upon which the Athletic Department teeters, and has served the vested interests of the school well since it was hurriedly written and pre-dated on the advice of our lawyers. All Student Athletes would be well served to carefully ignore this document until it’s too late to matter.

2 – Participation in high school sports is a privilege bestowed by the school, not a right of young people seeking the health benefits of exercise or the inclusive sense of belonging it brings. Academically challenged students who hope to make a contribution to the school, or who see sport as a route to peer group approval, should clearly understand that they are wasting their time and should go back to playing their video consoles or applying their gothic make up.

3 – Respect of your coach at all times is paramount. Many of these dedicated individuals are working diligently to boost the value of their final salary pension schemes by taking on the onerous task of coaching a sport they know nothing about.

4 – Student Athletes should clearly understand the level of commitment required by the carefully selected Nazis who run our programs. Student Athletes who have un-excused absences from practice will be barred from participating for two weeks and will be ritually humiliated by the coach prior to resuming play. The ONLY acceptable excuses for missing practice will be court appearances by members of the Varsity Football team, or participation in the local Gymnastics Club owned and operated by my wife.

5 – Multi-sport participation is allowable and encouraged on the clear understanding that priorities may have to be set. Where there is a conflict between sports all athletes should adhere to the following priority list:
(i) Varsity Football
(ii) Varsity Football
(iii) Varsity Football
(iv) JV Football
(v) Freshman Football
(vi) Men’s Basketball
(vii) Baseball
(viii) Academics
(ix) Any other pissy little sport that no-one cares about.

6 – Multi-sport participation does NOT extend to participation in non-school or club sports. Students who participate in club sports would do well to remember our school athletic motto: “We Own Your Ass”. Club sport athletes selected to represent the United States at national level should clearly understand that there is no greater honor than to represent the Armpitsville Highschool Chinchillas in the Greater Macomb County Level E Athletic Conference.

7 – Consumption of alcohol, use of recreational drugs, posting of inappropriate pictures on websites, and knocking up the superintendent’s daughter are all grounds for immediate dismissal from all athletic teams unless you are a stud starter on a potential state championship roster.

Student Athletes and their parents who need any clarification on our policy should contact me and I will happily interpret the rules to suit myself. Student Athletes wishing to appeal any decision by the Athletic Department should present a written submission to be considered by an appeals committee consisting of myself.

Yours In Sport

Anthony Selvesentered
Athletic Director

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The Big Dance

2010-04-09T10:44:00.001-07:00

It’s a sure sign that the World Cup is not far away when FSC has wall-to-wall ads from WorldSoccerShop offering us the chance to display our national pride, faith, and loyalty to the cause, by shelling out sixty bucks on a brand new shirt as worn by our heroes, i.e. Brazil.

I’m not sure how things will go for Uncle Sam’s boys this time around. Either we’ll fail miserably, in which case we’ll be assured by the media that it’s time for a “radical re-think of how we run soccer in this country” or we’ll end up doing OK in which case we’ll be told that it’s time for a “radical re-think of how we run soccer in this country”. So, to save some time, I’m going to get started right now with the ideas I’ve picked up from the best-in-class around the world.

Before we can win the men’s world cup we need to have a better showing in the U17 tournament. So, it’s time to take a leaf out of Nigeria’s book! Here is a country that has done consistently well by the simple tactic of using as many twenty-year-old under seventeens as they can find. How difficult can it be?

We need to abandon this crazy ‘college soccer’ nonsense! Not enough great players are coming out of college and all that remains is a bunch of guys who “nearly made it” being left with just a college degree and a decent set of prospects. We should be following the European model where the ‘nearly men’ that don’t make it to the pros can bask in the glory of knowing they helped develop the multi-millionaire players who now sit smugly in the back of the taxi-cab they drive.

We need to rid the country of the biggest oxy-moron in the modern game; “highschool soccer”. Enough already with this crazy notion of loyalty, companionship, fun, rivalry and athleticism all tied in to a level of academic standard and social behavior. The poor level of soccer played in highschool is getting in the way of the aspirations of the tiny percentage of people in this country who actually care about the World Cup.

So, my fellow Americans, lets abandon our national identity in favor of some AfroEurAsian Latin soccer pipedream! If nothing else we’ll have the perfect excuse when we get knocked out in the opening stages in 2014.

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Cutting Edge Techniques

2010-03-29T08:38:00.000-07:00

The Glayser, Jillet & Hocks Partnership is pleased to announce the formation of a new youth soccer club in Michigan. The partnership has purchased the assets of the previously non-profit Homespun Soccer Club, which will be re-launched as Michigan Leverage in the fall 2010 season. By using cutting-edge financial techniques the partnership has been able to purchase the club despite the fact that it does not have any money. Michigan Leverage will borrow money from the recently bailed out AGI Group and will use the cash to buy itself. The loan will be easily serviced provided enough parents continue to pay the new fee structure and none of the kids in the club ever leave, or their parents have to withdraw them due to financial hardship.

The partnership’s business plan calls for them to rack up huge debts by hiring professional coaches from English league outfit Leeds United, and renting every available hour at the Ultimate Star Soccer Complex. In year 3 or 4 of the new club’s existence the plan is to declare bankruptcy at a point in the season where the penalty of a loss of a state cup spot for not being in good standing won’t matter a damn. At that point in the proceedings, one of the partners who bought the club with someone else’s money, and oversaw the fantastic growth in it’s liabilities, will again buy the club out of receivership for a fraction of its value provided AGI agrees to write off it’s debts in a financial technique termed a ‘double whammy’.

Michigan Leverage is pleased to be able to offer the youth soccer players of Michigan, and their parents, the techniques used by only the finest soccer clubs and financial institutions in the world.

Stock Market News

2010-03-17T06:59:00.000-07:00

Shares in Bridgetone/Firelone shot up today on news of the financial success of the tire manufacturer’s latest recycling program. Under the innovative system the company first sells their product to the consumer and then charges them a second time when the tires need to be replaced, citing a “responsible disposal” cost. The worn tires are then ground up into a finely crumbled format and sold for a third time to the producers of the artificial soccer fields much beloved by the great American middle class. From there the crumbled tire particles attach themselves to the cleats, socks, bags and warm-ups of the nation’s six million unsuspecting soccer players before final distribution into frustratingly annoying little piles on the back seats of their parents expensive vehicles, and on the floors of their bathrooms, bedrooms and family rooms. Announcing record quarterly profits, company spokesman Weasley Nickendyme commented “We as a company are highly focused on green issues”.

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More Girl Power

2010-03-12T09:48:00.001-08:00

There’s a rumor sweeping the club that my eldest daughter’s new coach is going to be a woman!

I’ve got to say that my first reaction was “over my dead body” but the more I think about it, I’m starting to think that it might not be so very bad. It could actually be a fun to have a situation where half the parents are lusting after the coach instead of the coach lusting after half the parents.

The girls on the team should find some benefits too. For example they can talk to the new coach about their menstrual cycle, which is something they never could do with the current dude, even though he constantly behaves like he has a severe case of PMS. It’ll also be easier for the girls to talk to the new coach about other female issues such as sports bras and the like – although I have to say that the current guy has always been very attentive in that particular area.

The new coach can also depend on a lot of support from the male parents. It’s so encouraging how fathers are instantly aware that female coaches must need their help on matters of line up, tactics, play time and how the game should be played.

So I’ve been telling my daughter that it’s going to be great but for some reason she has got it into her head that she’s going to wait and see if the coach is any good or not, whether it’s a guy or a girl. Obviously she still has some growing up to do.

Take Your Kid To Work Day

2010-03-11T12:46:00.000-08:00

So, some poor fool in the Big Apple is in trouble for taking his kid to work in the air traffic control center at JFK? What was he thinking? I mean supposing the kid had run across those two pilots who were found to be FUI? We would have been in the crazy situation of a totally unqualified kid in charge of a bunch of highly paid old drunks who have no concern for their customers. I guess that would be pretty similar to how our soccer club is run.

Back in my modeling days I don’t think I would have taken any kid of mine to work with me. The problem would have been that my kids would have had to see me scantily clad and trying to look sexy while the guy in charge leers all over me and everyone else just stands around feeling sorry for me. A bit like how tryouts are these days.

You never know what kind of trauma some kids will suffer when their image of their parents is shattered in such a cruel fashion. I know one guy whose kid was destroyed by seeing his dad humiliated at work as everyone ridiculed and cursed him all day long. He says it’s the last time he ever takes his son to watch him referee a youth soccer game.

From The State

2010-03-08T13:28:00.000-08:00

Dear Parents

As the big tournaments get under way your State Association has only the very best interests of the soccer community at heart. In these trying economic times we all have to make some sacrifices and the association is aware that this has caused some concern in certain quarters. However, your Board of Directors is well aware that we are all in this together and that we have to share the load equally amongst all of us. Therefore, the policy of charging parents for spectator admission to watch their own kids play will continue. Divorced parents who come to games with their extended families will either learn the meaning of fidelity or will pay for the privilege. Families who can prove they have roots in Utah may be eligible for our polygamy pass with a 50% discount for each wife beyond the third.

The board is aware of a certain amount of disquiet with regard to certain parties who attend our games but do not contribute to the cost of running the tournament. We are determined to close this loophole. We therefore wish to make it clear that in future all kids on the subs bench will henceforth be considered spectators and will have to pay to watch themselves squirm in discomfort at sitting while a non-paying guest player takes their spot. Players who come off the bench before the half-time break can apply for a refund of 4% of their admission fee.

Directors of Coaching whose tax return indicates they earn in excess of $100K, or who drive a high end SUV funded by a parent, will continue to be admitted free of charge because, after all, this really is all about the kids.

Regards

Michigan Youth Suckers

ENCL

2010-03-08T11:07:00.000-08:00

The Michigan Charlatans are pleased to announce their acceptance into this year’s new league fashion. The Charlatans are one of two clubs in the state who have been granted a license to print money as one of the 12 nationwide franchises accepted into US Rebel Soccer’s expanded ENCL program. The same club that convinced you that your 8-year-old was wasting her time in rec., and then convinced you that your 10-year-old was ruining her career by playing in select, and that Michigan Premier was the only way to go for your 13-year-old, but that MRL was way better for U14 and up, and that First Division MRL was for losers, is now happy to be able to offer you a program specifically tailored to the needs of the wealthiest blowhard elitists amongst you who have grown tired of the limitations MRL Premier.

Commenting on his club’s latest ruse, Director of Chicanery Brian Morris stated, “The ENCL will allow us to seamlessly link the bank accounts of our parents with the pubs where we celebrate our abilities. Of course, this program is not for everyone. Only the most discerning of soccer parents will truly be able to see the subtle differences that make the same tired old coaches so much more effective in this new set up. This is the reason that the new league is called the ENCL – the Emperor’s New Clothes League.”

The bragging, boasting and over-spending will start in earnest as soon as the tears of the kids whose high school careers are over have dried. US Pub Soccer hopes that the ridiculous excess and over bearing parents will not get in the way of their belief that soccer played at the highest level by the finest players is a joy to behold.

Player Perspective

2010-03-04T08:50:00.000-08:00

After coming out of retirement to sub in with the co-ed team last week I’m now fully back in the swing of things with a brand new women’s team. We played our first game last night in an 8v8 over 30 league and have adopted the name “Michigan Cougars”. I have to say that we looked rather comely in our electric blue tops with white shorts, socks and thongs. I’m not sure about the thongs – there is actually more material in the warning label than there is on the thong itself and all it says is not to wear the garment close to an open flame. Well hello!

I’m sporting the number 9 on my shirt which I think reflects my role as an old-fashioned center forward. I’m very direct. I wanted to have the number 38 which was claimed by Jenny ‘Jiggles’ McCartney, but I think she was just boasting. Although we lost the game 2-0 I think we did pretty well and I scored, so how cool is that? The young coach we hired, Santiago Hornedog, said I had great technique and I finished well which is always nice to hear.

Of course we did get some cat calls and some extra ‘coaching’ from a number of the ‘gentlemen’ on the sidelines. It sorta reminded me of my youth soccer days when I used to wonder how my dad was able to ‘instruct’ me from the bleachers in a game he never played?

Girl Power

2010-03-02T09:33:00.000-08:00

So my eldest daughter’s final Sadie Hawkins dance seems to have passed off with only the usual amount of teenage girl drama. I’ve got to say that I liked the idea of the girls soccer team and their dates going together as a group. I enjoyed seeing them all together, although I’m glad they didn’t invite that bitch of central defender after she was caught making out with the goalkeeper’s boyfriend and earning herself the nickname of Joan Terry in the process. It was a real team building exercise which should serve them well for the upcoming season.

I think that maybe the decision to go with short dresses might have been a mistake. Not only did it give Jules the opportunity to model that little number she picked up at Strumpets-R-Us, but it also showed a lot of the battle scars that we’ve picked up along the way. Looking at the group photo I can see nine ACL surgeries, eleven severely scuffed knees from playing indoor, and a single bite mark on a girl’s thigh which she either picked up playing against those animals at Immaculate Conception, or from dating that kid from the local public school.

Of course the real fun in Sadie Hawkins is in the girls choosing and inviting their dates! So we had a girl’s soccer team in charge of their own fate with the male of the species relegated to the bench and waiting to be selected to play. I guess that it’s a little bit sad that it’s the only time that will happen in the girl’s career.

From The Courts

2010-02-26T09:00:00.000-08:00

Attorney Johnny Weasel of the law firm Phile, Threten & Settle lodged a claim today in Oakland County Small Claims Court against local soccer club Michigan Fantasy. Acting on behalf of disgruntled parent Al Spyneless, Weasel is seeking the return of $3,500 in coaching fees paid to the club. Weasel alleges that the soccer club’s Technical Director Neal Silvatongue used his position of power and influence to enter into a sexual relationship with his client’s wife, Barby Trophy-Spyneless. Attorney Weasel accepts that the soccer coach and his victim were free to indulge in their behaviour but that his client should not be obliged to pay for the services rendered.

Michigan Fantasy have launched a counter claim in which they allege that their employee effectively provided additional services over and above what Spyneless had paid for and that he should be liable for the balance.

Meanwhile the independent pressure group Advocates For Children has filed suit against the club, the coach, the parents, and the ambulance chasing law firm. They are acting on behalf of the soccer playing kid who is caught in the crossfire and whom they allege was the last person anyone thought about before they went about their business.

Crazy Men!

2010-02-19T13:06:00.001-08:00

WTF is it with the male of the species? Are they all nuts or is it just the ones in my circle? I swear that if wasn’t for the fact that we need them for the occasional bit of hammering and nailing, I would handle everything myself.

The latest screw up down our way was when bonehead boy and his estranged father decided to spend their quality time together at Knub’s Knob ski center last weekend! The kid is a development academy player and he’s indulging in a risky pursuit with a flamed out dopehead fresh out of addiction rehab! Then, to make matters worse, they eat flatiron steaks and Texas fries washed down with chocolate milk shakes for dinner, and stay up till 3am watching adult DVDs in 3D on his father’s 96” HD widescreen. This on the eve of an academy scrimmage against Canton Community College’s B team! WTF were they thinking?

Fortunately he is back with me this weekend as the regular season for the Academy starts tomorrow. I kept him out of school today and got an extension on his homework so that his mind is clear. His girlfriend is banished for the weekend and he can get his cellphone back provided he starts the game. I made him some tasty bran and banana for breakfast, pasta for lunch, pasta for dinner and pasta for supper. He had his vitamins, his supplements, his energy drinks and that stuff that they don’t test for yet at his age. Lights out is 9.30pm. I also removed the copy of Playboy that he keeps under his bed and we had a serious adult conversation about it to the point where he understands that I’m not a prude, and I understand that it’s very natural, but that he shouldn’t take care of that until after the game in case it drains all his energy. I think he understood and so I didn’t insist that we tie his arm to the bedpost.

I think he’s happy that I cut him a lot more slack than the fanatical parents on our team who live vicariously through their kids.

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Flaunty Shannon And The Holy Grail

2010-02-19T08:33:00.000-08:00

My eldest daughter’s friend Shannon has shown the world that it can be done with the news that she’s landed a full ride soccer scholarship to a Division 1 school! This is such a significant piece of news that I’ve actually tried hard to make it look like I’m genuinely pleased for her, and that I can stand to see her flaunting her new school colors in our face at every practice. She’ll be playing at Southern Michigan University where the athletic teams used to be called “The Crusaders”. However, they dropped that name when they opened their first foreign campus in Baghdad, Iraq. They’ve now settled on the new name of “The Foreclosures” to give them a nice solid sense of being part of Michigan. It’s not a school that I know a great deal about but I’m busily trawling the internet to try and find a few prime faults about the place so that I can disparage the girl as soon as her back is turned.

Got to say that I’m a little bit surprised that she made it this far. I mean, she’s a decent solid player but she’s nothing spectacular and never played with a really top price club. She wasn’t the most dedicated player either and I always thought was a little bit too studious and GPA fixated to make it as a top athlete. Plus she wasn’t much of a social animal and didn’t even get invited to go with the rest of the girls down to Cancun last Spring Break for their “Farewell To Highschool, Chastity and Sobriety” trip. So really I can’t see what the attraction is for the coach that has recruited her?

But maybe not everything is as good as it seems for Little Miss Perfect! One of the other girls, Roz Lynn Chapple, has been looking in to this so-called “full ride” business. With Division 1 schools only having 14 full soccer scholarships to hand out to their girls teams she was as surprised as everyone else that Shannon got one. But it turns out she’s only getting 20% for soccer with the rest made up of academic money and a bunch of other little grants that she spent her time applying for when she should have been on the practice field. Ha! You can always trust Roz Lynn Chapple to find where the truth is buried!

So I hope that Shannon has learned that if she hadn’t wasted all that time studying and applying for support she might just have won one of those mythical Full Rides and really earned our respect.

Too Late

2010-02-17T06:47:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking that maybe I started this Facebook deal a little bit too late. I know I’ve been telling everyone that the idea was that I could get to know the people that read my blog, but that wasn’t the only reason I set up the account. Really what I wanted to do was get to know the new high school coach. He really is a bit of a dish and my daughter and all the other girls have been raving about him. So I thought I’d friend him on Facebook, send a few innuendo laden private messages, then post a picture or two of me flashing my stimulus packages, and hey presto! He’d be like every other soccer coach in the history of the beautiful game – putty in the hands of a loose living, morally bankrupt, middle age mom in her prime.

It was all going pretty well and I reckoned I had enough incriminating replies from him to ensure that my daughter was named team captain and started every game. But then the buzz-killing athletic director gets ideas above his pay grade and puts an end to free speech, free love and expensive mistakes. “No Facebook fraternizing with the students and parents” is the new rule at Stalag Westchester High. Of course the AD knows all about how new technology can land you in trouble as we all remember that time his plan to make the school secretary ‘howl like a wolf on heat’ became a little bit too public when he hit the “Reply All” button.

So the fun is over with the coach for the time being, but maybe I’ll get a chat with him at the meeting tonight. We are having a conference to sort out a few problems with the team. Apparently one of the kids on the roster is being bullied by a few of the others. Lots of name calling and posting of pictures shot in the locker room. The poor girl is a wreck and has taken to hurting herself. I can’t help but think that if we’d been able to keep an eye on these kid’s Facebook accounts one of us could have put a stop to it before it got out of hand.

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Seven Days Later

2010-02-10T09:55:00.000-08:00

Well a full week has come and gone since national signing day and my eldest daughter has still not been committed to any particular institution. The reason for that is she is still weighing up her options and is playing one school off against another to try and tease out a little bit more financial support and some more assurances on playing time in her freshman year. It has got absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the nearest she came to an offer was a National Letter of Indifference from almost every school in the Midwest.

I hear that at the boy’s Academy team practices last Wednesday all the kids in the Class of 2010 were showing up in brand new regalia of the school they had signed for that day. Michigan, Michigan State, Northwestern, and Indiana were all represented. Fortunately my son’s t-shirt from the Frankenmuth Zhenders Chicken Frying School of Excellence was still in the laundry.

So, I’ve got to be honest and say that I’m a little bit concerned that my daughter will make the right decision and choose a school that reflects the amount of cash I’ve sunk into travel soccer over the years. I pray that we don’t end up like the poor kid on her team who ended up accepting a spot in a school that doesn’t even have a soccer program in what her mother calls an “educational decision”. There are some crazy-ass parents out there.

Which Team Are You On?

2010-02-09T10:22:00.000-08:00

My youngest is in a little bit of a difficult situation at the moment. She played as a guest for a pretty prestigious team this past weekend and being surrounded by other good players seemed to bring out the best in her. The rest of the girls on her current team were really excited for her getting the chance to play with one of the big clubs and I think her coach thought that he must be doing something right to have one of his players invited to play with them. She was hoping that maybe she could tryout for this team in the summer but then her current coach said he’d be glad to sign a release for her if the big club wanted her now as he thought it was a great opportunity. That was music to the ears of the big club’s coach who has been on the lookout for a strong left sided player and he just happens to be the ODP coach for her age group so he’s a great guy to have on your side. The rest of the parents on the current team are sad to see her go but are pleased that it frees up more field time for some of the fringe players on our team and it shows the rest of the kids that it can be done. So where’s the problem? Well her dad (aka Attilla The Hun) has a hard and fast mindset that only liberal quitters leave a team in mid season and says he’s going to “teach her the meaning of the word commitment”.

Back In The Saddle

2010-02-08T12:13:00.001-08:00

So I got a call out of the blue on Friday night asking me to ‘come out of retirement’ and sub-in on my girlfriend’s over 30 soccer team. She plays on a co-ed side called the Bengay Tigers in a 6v6 league which holds it’s games in a converted auto plant with a playing surface designed specifically to knock the crap out of aging knees. I didn’t need to be asked twice and before you knew it I had looked out all the essential equipment that a 48 year old, mother-of-three, soccer player needs: a pair of Adidas Sambas, a heavy-duty sports bra, and a ready supply of incontinence pads.

When I arrived the girls were already warming up leaving me on the bench with the guys as they tightened their knee braces, strapped their strapping, and filled their cups that runneth over. The heavy scent of menthol in the air brought back memories of the glory days when our star striker Gerry Attrick scored a last minute winner against Ludmuller Log And Lumber Liquidators in the final of the Detroit Narcotics Anonymous invitational. Then, just before kick off, there was one of those familiar screams of pain that let us all know that one of the guys had rubbed the Bengay a little bit too high up into his groin area.

The game itself was fine but the crowd was outrageous. The problem was that most of the players had brought their kids with them to watch. The little brats sat there on the sidelines shouting out instructions to us! Not only was that very distracting but what makes them such experts that they think they can tell us what to do? They also gave the referee a really hard time and blamed every player on the team for our problems except, of course, their own darling parents. There really is something disconcerting about listening to them disparaging our coach and you have to ask yourself where these kids get the idea that this is how you behave at the side of a soccer field?

Thanks!

2010-01-30T21:30:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, just want to give a little ‘thanks’ for the news that my son’s coach is going to be fine! He had a little lump on his right u-know-what but it turns out that it’s nothing to worry about. How cool is that?! So thanks to the docs for their prompt attention. Thanks also to our goalkeeper’s mom who first found the lump and ensured he got some early treatment.

State Of The Nation

2010-01-28T11:28:00.000-08:00

In his State of the Nation speech last night President Obama outlined revolutionary plans to turn around the American economy. The under fire leader of the free world has challenged congress to come up with a bill to overcome the largest drain on the economy, the cost of which towers over the crisis in our financial institutions, the war in Iraq, and the bill to fund socialized medicine. Speaking with the fire and passion that propelled him into office, the President indicated how $97 billion dollars were squandered each and every working day as an army of anonymous delusional soccer parents and their mentally challenged coaches fought out an acrimonious on-line war using computerized soccer forums on their company dime. Mr. Obama noted that by simply eliminating the worst offenders the country could free up enough man hours to re-build the Egyptian pyramids as a tourist attraction in Flint, Michigan. It would also free up enough bandwidth on the internet to allow us to finally exploit the web for the purpose for which it was truly intended – selling porn to fat middle aged lonely sad fools without the embarrassment of having to visit one of those stores on the edge of town. Speaking in his response Republican Senator Attila The Hun said “Finally, this is the sort of brave, creative leadership we have been looking for from the President”.

Evaluations

2010-01-28T08:09:00.000-08:00

Here in America a lot of parents are still finding their feet in the crazy world of youth soccer. Since I’ve been around the block a bit I thought that some of you newbies might benefit from my experience. So I’m pleased to present my easy interpretation guide to help you decipher your kid’s annual evaluation from your dedicated coach. Here is my ‘coach speak-to-real life’ translation phrase book for you:

Robust and strong in the tackle = Your kid is a thug.

The mainstay of our defense = Your kid is a psycho thug.

The first name on my team sheet every week = Your kid is the tallest on the roster.

Might benefit from additional coaching sessions = I think you guys have more disposable income that I could get a piece of.

One of my longer term prospects = Your kid is useless but his mom has a nice rack.

An essential part of the team chemistry = Thanks for all the drinks his father buys on trips out of town.

I haven’t determined his optimum playing position yet = I’m not sure how long after I have slept with the mom I have to wait before I can cut this kid.

A true utility player = We need to keep 18 kids on the roster to keep the fees for down for the good players.

Always boisterous and full of life = An annoying little shit.

Needs to work on her fitness = Your kid is one cheeseburger away from being moved to starting goalkeeper.

Great communication skills = I hope you never find out about the text messages.

A candidate for the Academy = We also take direct deposit.

Dealing well with the growth spurt = Plays like Bambi on ice.

Maturing into a well rounded asset to the team = I could get arrested for what I’m really thinking.

An excellent prospect = I’ve mixed your kid up with someone else.

A true two-footed player = Can’t kick with either foot.

Excels as the holding mid in a 3-5-2 playing interposer behind the creative generalissimo = Buy your snake oil here.

Cool Hand Luke

2010-01-26T07:07:00.000-08:00

Parents of the Northern Kalamazoo Charlatans soccer club have been split into warring factions over how to address the actions of their former Director of Coaching, Luke Royalflush. The problems began in spring 2009 when the club’s treasurer, Richard Turpin, began to suspect that either he couldn’t count or American youth soccer was even more of a rip off than he had always suspected. His suspicions were further aroused when the DOC began showing up for the club’s infrequent practice sessions in a brand new Cadillac Escalade accompanied by an exotic dancer named Tipper Inergarterbelt, whom he introduced as the new Speed and Agility trainer. Matters came to a head when the club’s U15 girls reached the state cup final in spite of the DOC having been AWOL for 8 weeks. The team was coached in the final by a parent stand-in who was roundly criticized by the opposing coach for being ‘just a dad without any professional qualifications’ after the Charlatans kicked his professional ass 7-1 in a runaway victory.

Following the game the club wanted to mark the girl’s achievement by patronizing them with a commemorative t-shirt. It was then revealed that there wasn’t enough money in the club coffers to buy the t-shirts and that the DOC had absconded with the cash to feed his gambling habit.

At that point, in an act of unparalleled generosity, the founder of the Charlatans movement, Sandy Barmey, announced that he would fund the t-shirts entirely as a gift out of his own pocket, provided the NKC franchise was returned to him, the parents signed a waiver giving up any rights to legal action against him, each parent wrote a glowing testimonial about his coaching methods, and the local media left the story well alone.

DOC Royalflush was finally traced to a room on the 17th floor of a Las Vegas hotel above the casino where he had gambled the dues paid by each of these poor deprived kids. At the time the police broke down his hotel room door Royalflush was in the company of a cocktail waitress named Mandy Melons with a mountain of freshly cut cocaine on the coffee table and hundreds of thousands of dollars of the money he had won strewn around the room. Royalflush himself was naked, on the balcony of the room, screaming “King of the World!” and “You can shove your Cryuff Turns up your bottom!”

Sandy Barmey immediately released a 50,000 word press release in which he predicted that the USA would win the 2014 world cup now that one of the “finest trainers in soccer” was back leading our kids into the next generation. Team manager Tina Overbearing suggested that the money Royalflush had won rightfully belonged to the club and should be split evenly amongst the parents with the exception of Nicole Pauper’s mom who did not have her dues up to date. Rebel parent Tony Holierthanthou suggested that this was not the type of role model we wanted for our kids. Cocktail waitress Mandy Melons claimed she had placed the winning bet and the money was hers. Nicolas Synical wanted to let the money go and use the experience as a “lesson of the evils of the Charlatans approach to soccer which I have been opposed to for 20 years”.

The matter is now in the hands of circuit court Judge George Easilyswayed who will try to determine if anyone comes out of the whole sordid matter looking less of a rat fink than anyone else. All the concerned adults will attend his courtroom on 15th May 2010. A pick up soccer tournament will be held on fields adjacent to the courtroom to keep the kids occupied while the court is in session. The kids will while away the hours with a ball at their feet whilst the adults play out the real fun and games.

Class Act Meets Crass Act

2010-01-16T19:41:00.000-08:00

The inexorable march of litigation into youth sports took another giant step forward yesterday when Halfway Down Highschool in Ohio announced that it had retained the legal firm of Sue, Cheatem & Spend to represent it in it’s on going battle with the Ohio State High School Sports Inflexibility Counsel. The law firm – whose Latin motto is Eef Gloveicus Non-Fiticus Thou Mustus Acquiticus – will appoint enfant terrible, Robert Slimeball, as lead counsel. Slimeball, who studied at the prestigious Institute Of Defending The Indefensible, will assume his duties as soon as he can complete his current work representing Roman Polanski.

Halfway Down is a private organization vaguely described as a ‘school’ in its glossy sales brochure. Students typically pay exorbitant fees to be able to shield themselves from the sort of poor life lessons they would receive in the public system. Honor, integrity, acceptance of authority, and not giving your trophy back until the law intervenes are the values of the school.

The case arises out of the OSHSSIC’s ruling that HD fielded an ineligible player in final of the Division VI Parental Bragging Rights soccer tournament. HD won a thrilling, tightly contested final 17-0 against Hapless Public in a match played in front of a record crowd of 13 spectators and two dogs.

With the trophy presented and the game forgotten about 15 minutes after the final whistle, HD’s marquee player was already at the airport departure gate on her way back to Florida’s Hotshot Soccer School when a Hapless Public parent started typing a venomous anonymous allegation of ineligibility to the local gutter press.

HD’s position is that the player was at all times enrolled with the school in a distance learning capacity by virtue of the fact that she was in constant contact with her classmates via the MySpace social networking website. They point out that by playing regularly for the Florida Hotshots she was in fact recovering from an injury, and medical records do indeed suggest that she was rehabbing a severely bruised ego picked up when the school lost in the final last year. School superintendent Jack Daniels commented “Having been in rehab for many years myself I understand the importance of these issues. I’d just like to point out that we won the game on the field and nothing else matters including my inability to read the rules. It is unfortunate that this young lady has been singled out. Nobody said a damn thing about the three girls playing up front for us who actually graduated in 1997, the goalie who played after we lowered our minimum pass rate requirements, or the long haired central defender who is actually a dude with his junk tucked away where the sun don’t shine”.

Speaking for OSHSSIC, director of public relations Tony Selfimportant pointed out; “The counsel is not here to assist in the development of the game in general or to encourage class acts/genuine prospects like this young player. Neither are we here to support the efforts of a youth soccer team who made a genuine attempt to excel in a sporting event. The counsel exists to demonstrate to the kids the level of incompetence which exists amongst the adults who manage their endeavors.”

The case will be heard in the Ohio Court of Frivolous Wastes Of Time and is expected to run for much longer than anyone really cares.

Freedom Of Information

2010-01-13T12:02:00.000-08:00

I’m a bit pissed off with my daughter’s club at the moment. It seems they want to bring in some new rule that the team’s monthly accounts should only show the income itself and not who is making the payments. Apparently some Prius driving, socialist parent with an Obama fetish and an actual belief in global warming, wants there to be no indication of which players are on scholarship! It seems that little Miss Bleeding Heart thinks that the paupers will be embarrassed if everyone knows that their tab is being picked up for them. WTF is that all about? My kid is on scholarship and I’m proud of it! If no one knows that my kid is on free ride even though I can drive to out-of-state tournaments in my Cadillac Escalade and stay in much better hotels than the rest of the team riff-raff, then how are they going to know that my kid is only on ‘scholarship’ because she’s such a hotshot that the team recruited her with the promise that the rest of the mug parents would pay her way?

And The Academy Award Goes To.....

2010-01-06T07:58:00.000-08:00

For nearly 20 years the coach’s association Soccer Amerika Direct (SAD) has been promoting the game to very little effect here in the USA. In January of each year the group’s senior members, known as Fellows Of Old Long Standing (FOOLS), come together to bestow their annual award to the most encouraging trend in the North American game.

This year’s recipient has it’s basis in the professional clubs of Europe who launched this initiative as the panacea to all the game’s ills: here was the silver bullet which would drive back the hordes of joyous young players flooding into their game from Africa, and stop dead in their tracks those unscrupulous agents who did nothing to develop the players beyond parting them from 20% of their outrageous signing on fees.

Not wanting to miss out on a poorly thought out idea the principles were rapidly adopted here in the USA, where they were introduced in a uniquely American half-assed, incompetent way. The initiative was quickly taken up by those clubs who had been excluded from the original program by virtue of their long track record of not having a clue what they were on about, and the profile of the game was raised as more and more parents could be fleeced out of an ever larger part of their shrinking income to fund this ‘next big thing’. Soccer Amerika Direct has marveled at the way our coaches have packaged this idea and sold it to an unsuspecting public to the point where the parents of kids as young as 4 years old have been seduced by this single word miracle.

It is therefore with great pleasure that our SADFOOLS bestow their 2010 lifetime achievement award to the abuse, misuse and blatant commercial exploitation of the word ACADEMY.

The Final Straight

2010-01-05T07:39:00.000-08:00

So, 2010 brings the last few months of my eldest daughter’s high school career! Just a spring season of soccer to go and then it’s off to college for the twisted little cow. This week we’ve been mulling over another college offer. Well, it’s not really an offer, it’s more of a sales brochure that we received in the mail, but we’re calling it another offer whenever I have to talk to any of those skanky bitch moms on her travel team.

I’m not sure that this particular college is right for her however. It’s a Division III school and since division three doesn’t have sports scholarships I can’t even pretend she’s getting a full ride for soccer the way lots of her teammates do with the Div I & II schools. Plus, it might not be a very good fit for her academically. She wants to study Teen Sexual Health and Contraception with a view to becoming a family planning counselor, but they don’t offer that course at Our Immaculate Mary College of The Blessed Maiden in Boston.

The soccer program doesn’t look too great either. The team’s position in the RLCC (Recovering Lapsed Catholics Conference) is under threat after the coach of the team that they knocked out in the first round of the post-season lodged an official protest. Apparently he is claiming that our team had too many players on the field by virtue of the fact that three of the girls on our team are pregnant. Our coach says that there is no case to answer because life doesn’t begin at conception. I was a bit surprised to hear him say that but it does at least show that he has the winning mentality of a soccer coach who can successfully abandon his principles for a deep run into the playoffs.

Plus we don’t know how long Coach Yerkov is going to be there. All is not well between him and the Athletic Director, Cardinal Fiddleabout, whom the coach accuses of deliberately knocking the three girls up with a view to undermining his position. The AD has countered with an accusation that the coach had sex in the port-a-john at the side of the field during the half-time break when we were 7-0 up against Holy Redeemer Blessed Are The Meek For They Always Lose In The PK Shootout College For The Bewildered. When it was pointed out to the AD that the coach was in there on his own he replied “Exactly my point.”

So we have lots to think about: the upcoming soccer season, prom, graduation, and most importantly, how in the name of god am I going to make it look like the college she ends up attending is the one she wanted to go to all along?

Nicknames

2009-12-18T14:34:00.000-08:00

What is it with these politically correct thought police who want us to stop using nicknames for all kids on the team? Is this what it has come to as the first decade of the new millennium shudders to an end? When little ‘Psycho’ gets back from his anger-management classes we can’t welcome him in the normal manner? When ‘Suck Up’ carries the coach’s bag back to his car again we all have to say “thank you Andrew?” I can’t even call Mary’s kid ‘The Judge’ any more even though he spends all that time on the bench?

Well I’m not going to be told by some hyper-sensitive, NPR listening, liberal tree hugger what I can and can’t do! Our starting center-back will always be ‘A.D.D.’ as far as I’m concerned even though he has so much Ritalin in him I swear he rattles as he runs. ‘Stoner Boy’ has been my name of choice for the addict’s kid for as long as I can remember and ‘Charity’ is my constant reminder to the scholarship kid of how lucky he is to be on the team. Plus, I’m pretty sure that the Hispanic kid with the fancy foot skills likes me calling him ‘Juan on Juan’ even though his name is really Peter.

Even our coach enters into the spirit of things and answers to a variety of names. Sally calls him ‘Chewbacca’ because she can’t understand a word the crazy foreigner says. Tim refers to him as ‘IRS’ which is something to do with him always wanting to be paid in cash, and I call him ‘Big Guy’ which I realize you won’t understand because he’s only 5’ 2”, but I know him a little better than the rest of you.

So let’s kick back at these fools by taking it to the next level and starting to use nicknames for the crazy parents too! Now that George is back from rehab we can call him ‘Needles’ again and his wife can be ‘Desperado’. The team manager should be called ‘Sticky Fingers’ for the deft way she manages the money, while the fat goalie’s dad should be ‘Dr. Atkins’. But if that greasy lecherous father of our striker ogles down my top one more time and calls me ‘Twin Peaks’ again I swear I’m going to kick him in the size fives, because that is just totally insensitive!

By The Time I Got To Phoenix

2009-12-17T14:06:00.000-08:00

So with his real dad being a no-show, it fell to me to take the boy to the Phoenix Showcase for the start of his second year in the hair-brained Development Academy program. I’m not a big fan of this program as you know, and I’m a little bit disappointed that he has chosen to focus on a girl’s sport, but I suppose I have to give him some encouragement. I just don’t get all this ‘play and train like the pros’ business that they’ve got going on. Only one game per day, three-to-one training to game ratio, mandatory rest periods, scientific testing, WTF?! Why can’t we just drive these kids into the ground the way we do with real soccer on the girl’s side?

Anyway, this year’s team is made up of some carry-overs from last year’s roster, some kids from the state’s other academy club, a few from the club that won the state cup, as many of the hot-shots from all the other clubs that we could pick up, and one kid who came through the ranks at our own club. I suppose it is heartening to see all these players coming to the club to be part of our long tradition of developing the best players in the state.

One of the highlights of the showcase was supposed to be the evening games featuring the US U17 MNT playing a round robin series of games against Portugal, The Netherlands and Brazil. I guess it’s nice of us to help bring the game to these developing countries.

However, I was very disappointed with our US roster. A kid from Michigan, one from Indiana, one from Illinois, a bunch from California! In fact the roster was made up of kids from all over the country! What’s the deal? Looks to me like the coach is just one great big RECRUITER! Typical of a coach who doesn’t know anything about developing his own players! That’s the sort of sharp practice poaching that would get him in a lot of trouble if he tried to pull those stunts in the Northern Central Michigan Premier Development Super Olympic Select League. We have a fine committee of distinguished self-important non-entities who would slap that sort of behavior down in a minute. So you better get with it Mr US Soccer! This was the DEVELOPMENT Academy Showcase, remember?

Aboutface Book

2009-12-17T08:19:00.000-08:00

Like most concerned parents I’m always on the look out for good solid advice on how to raise our kids in this scary modern world. I make a point of regularly watching Dr. Phil and Jerry Springer for the sort of positive role models we all need in this day and age. We soccer parents are in a particularly vulnerable position because, without a background in the game ourselves, we have to hand our kids over to these slippery foreign coaches. Very few of these randy ratbags I’ve slept with over the years seem to adhere to my high standards of integrity, morality and modesty. So, as the mother of a developing teenage girl, I have to look out for my kid. I’m therefore very glad to hear about the publication of a new tome on how the modern teen communicates. Of course, I didn’t have the time to actually read this Aboutface book, but I did scan over the sensational headlines in a synopsis by one of the reputable journalists on the Notional Inquirer at the supermarket checkout the other day.

It seems we should be looking out for coaches who chose to speak to the kids. Apparently these so-called conversations are un-attributable and highly deniable. In order to avoid getting into a ‘he said/she said’ type of situation we should be encouraging our kids to communicate with their coach in a written format which is recorded and easily reviewed.

Not that this absolves us of any responsibility to get some background on the coach we are handing our precious kids and, more importantly, our hard earned cash to. The book therefore suggests that we get onto the coaches friend list on his social networking site to see if he’s the kind of person we want our kids to be with. I have to say there are a couple of coaches at our club who won’t be getting anywhere near my daughter although in the interests of being inclusive I’ve added them to my own account.

So, I’m doing the right thing and having my daughter communicate with the coach via text message, having her befriend him on Facebook, and asking him to stop talking to her. Now the best part is that since I pay her cell phone bill, and I pay for her internet service, the messages all belong to me and I can review them as I see fit. Our former mayor here in Detroit and his erstwhile paramour know all about who owns text messages!

But I was telling all this to my own crazy dingbat mother and she gets it into her head that reading your kid’s texts and emails is the modern equivalent of reading her diary! WTF! She’s ranting on about how some parents get the medium mixed up with the message, and how if we’ve raised our kids right they’ll know what is and isn’t appropriate. She seems to think I have some responsibility, and has this nutty notion that we can give the kids some space to live and grow safe in the knowledge that if anyone does actually step over the line then text and Facebook gives us the solid documentation that spoken words don’t! That’s the sort of wacko thinking that demonstrates just how out of touch the older generation really is.

The Continental Disease

2009-12-14T12:19:00.000-08:00

I think we might be exposing our soccer playing kids to a little bit of a bad influence by directing them to watch the thrills, spills and skills of the English Premier League. Although the EPL might well be the best domestic soccer league in the world I think a little bit of the old British Bulldog spirit has gotten lost of late, and its been replaced by a bad dose of the 'continental disease'. All these European superstars might well be bringing their fancy skills to the league but they are also bringing their ability to flop in the box at every opportunity.

Well listen up Johnny Foreigner! English gentlemen don't play the game like that!

Fortunately those fine referees are on the case of these slippery continental cheats - as can be seen by the yellow cards issued to Monsieur Rooney and Herr Gerrard these past two weekends.

Landon Donovan Goes To Everton!

2009-12-09T12:16:00.000-08:00

I hear that David Beckham is working with one of those journalists who specializes in working non-stories up into sensational blockbusters with a view to questioning Donovan's committment to the MLS. Landon himself is saving up to buy the Everton first team their Christmas dinner, less he be considered a tight wad. Meanwhile, Bruce Arena reportedly walked into training this morning, held up the captain's armband and asked, "Ok, who wants to try this on now?"

Alphabet Soup, Anyone?

2009-12-09T11:55:00.000-08:00

My daughter was asking who her cousin plays for out in Washington state. So I explained that she plays for ECFC of the SYSA but they’ll soon be the SU unless her attorney invokes the WSYSA to keep them independent in the PDL as the PDLC wants them to, but that depends on whether she makes the ODP which is really now the RTC feeder program for either the SSFC or the USYSA depending on whether the kids have any balls or not. I could see she was confused so I explained that SYSA (or SU) is one of six SA’s in District 1 of WSYSA which is, of course, in Region IV of USYSA. So then my little angel says “No mom, I just wanted to know if she’s on the blue team or the red team”. Oh, if only it were that simple!

Pay To Play!

2009-12-08T12:21:00.000-08:00

I really don’t know why everyone is getting their thongs in a bunch over this so-called economic crisis. Last night I was reclining with the pool boy in my late husband’s leather laz-e-boy, sipping a cocktail that the maid had brought me, and surfing through the HD channels on our 96” flat screen when I stumbled upon those self-righteous dingbats on HBO’s “Real Sports” show. To start with there was a nice encouraging article, that my nancy-boy son ought to have watched, about how our real American young men get back into a proper sporting endeavor within just a few minutes of taking a good old fashioned concussive hit – way to go gridiron boys! That’s the spirit!

However, it was all downhill from there on. The next item was about some bunch of hover mothers down in Ohio who want to increase my taxes to keep their high school sports programs running! What is it with these people? Don’t they know that REDUCING taxes is as American as Friday night football? Get outa here! I can solve all you pinko commie girl’s problems with just one little phrase – Pay-To-Play!

Let’s look at the benefits of Pay-To-Play in high school sports:

1 – No riff-raff! School sports don’t allow failing kids, and they don’t allow ill-disciplined kids, so why do we allow poor kids? We have standards to uphold and we don’t want any badly dressed kids rolling up to the games in their clapped out Hondas and putting on their Walmart cleats! I don’t care how frickin’ good you are.

2 – More coaching responsibility. If I hand over the hard earned interest on my father’s investments to the team then I have every right to expect to see my kid on the field. That should make sure the coach is responsible for getting him ready to play. Don’t give me any of that “not good enough” BS – I’ve paid you good money to make him good enough. And as for your stupid coach’s discipline of ‘no-practice, no-play’, well how about my new version for you; ‘no play, no pay’!

3 – Reduced roster sizes. Back when I was in high school only the very best athletes made the varsity roster. These days kids wander around with more letters than Vennegor Of Hesselink has on the back of his shirt. With Pay-To-Play, not only can my kid get the coaching attention he needs but our varsity athletes can walk around the school getting the proper respect their parent’s income deserves.

So roll on economic downturn I say! The only thing I’m not sure about is the name. “Pay-to-Play” doesn’t quite have the ring to it. How about we call it Club, or Select, or Travel, or……

What Is It With Referees These Days?

2009-11-24T06:11:00.000-08:00

Jeez! Where in the name of all that is expensive do you find a decent referee these days? That buffoon we had last weekend was even worse than the blind donkey we had in the semi-final of the Body Armour tournament up in Flint, MI. She was so bad we had to start singing “Fat Bottomed Girls” at her just to cheer ourselves up. Her little balding bespectacled AR got all bent out of shape just because someone called him “Gandhi”, and I swear the kid running the line on the far side had to change his diaper at half time because he was so scared of our center half’s dad. Then the little rat has the temerity to throw down his flag and storm off in a huff just because Big Eddie started to help him with the offside calls! Kids these days get their money too easily if they can pass up $20 just for running up and down a field for an hour or so. The worst of it is that I think one of our parents is friendly with the ref because he shouted “Hey, I know where you live!” just after she blew that offside call that cost us the game. I did see him following her out to the parking lot afterwards although she seemed to be in a bit of a rush to get going.

So I thought I’d seen it all until we came up against this Uber Psycho last weekend. I hadn’t seem him do any of our games before but some of our parents seemed to know him quite well by virtue of the fact that they reminded him he was a short-sighted, illegitimate, pedophile. At half time our coach tried to explain where he was going wrong and the buffoon hits him with a red card! WTF! I’ll admit that the coach might have stepped over the line by telling him where he could shove his red card but that dude just let the power go to his head. A bunch of us went over to try and settle him down and he ends up calling the game and using his cell phone to call the cops! What a pussy!

Then this week we get the word that we are going down to only one ref per game and we have to provide ‘parent linesmen’. Jeez! Seems that not enough of the old, fat, bow-legged little Hitler’s want to come out and work for a decent living anymore! What is wrong with these people? Well I hope they all know that it’s the kids that suffer.

Masterclass II

2009-11-20T12:52:00.000-08:00

The American Soccer Schools Open Legends Education program announces the replacement of it’s Masterclass DVD with a new updated version to reflect developments in the world game, and it’s growth in the USA. By using current world superstars to present the material it is hoped that the ASSOLE program will appeal to a younger audience.

The section on shielding the ball from an opponent, previously presented by Franz ‘Kaiser’ Beckenbauer, will be replaced by French superstar Thierry Henry’s program on shielding the ball from the referee’s view. Henry will go on to present his unique juggling skills in which he demonstrates how to keep the ball in play without getting his cleats muddy.

The grainy 1950s film of the dribbling skills of Sir Stanley Matthews (widely regarded as the last skilful player to pull on a Stoke City shirt) has been dropped in favor of Eduardo’s expert class on flopping in the box to claim a penalty kick when things aren’t going your way.

George Best’s class on how to make the best of your talent will be retained and augmented with input from English legend Paul Gascoigne. However, a proposal to replace this with a section provided by either Gareth Bale or Theo Walcott has been tabled for the time being.

The now commonplace Cryuff Turn will be replaced by the Tevez Turn in which the concept of team loyalty is paramount, and Arsenal’s William Gallas will replace another former gunner, Tony Adams, in presenting the section on subtle foot skills.

Finally, the 20 year old section on Cantankerous Management and Referee Baiting Skills by Alex Ferguson, will be replaced by a new section on Cantankerous Management and Referee Baiting Skills by Sir Alex Ferguson.

ASSOLE hopes that this line up of current world superstars will provide our youth soccer players with a fine set of role models.

Keeping Possession

2009-11-18T13:18:00.000-08:00

I guess I never really understood what my son’s coach meant when he said “winning in soccer is all about possession”. I had thought it meant the team should try to prevent the other team from getting the ball, but that didn’t seem to fit well with his tactic of hoofing it up the field and hoping that by some miracle it might land at the feet of one of our kids who makes a habit of loitering without any intent. Of course, the chance of them then actually doing anything with it when we all disarm them by hollering “shoot!” at the top of our voices always seemed equally remote. Even the coach’s ‘safety first’ approach of defending every ball by knocking it out of play at the earliest opportunity always seemed to give possession to the other team, but I always thought that was because a silly girlie mother like me didn’t really understand the nuances of the game the way these highly educated chaps do.

But I think I might be starting to work it out. I was asking him why he kept a roster of 22 players even though he could only dress 18 and rarely let the subs play anyway. I wondered if some of those kids wouldn’t be better off starting with another club instead of riding the pine with us or playing on our B, C or D teams. But maybe it is a game of possession after all? If we use our reputation to possess all the best players and prevent them playing against us then we should be on the way to another relentless procession towards this year’s Hollow Victory State Cup!

Last Saturday

2009-11-13T12:08:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday’s game was such a let down. I knew ahead of time that Jenny wasn’t going to be there so I wouldn’t get the latest info on how her and her husband were getting along after she caught him making a pass at the team mom at the end-of-season pool party. So I still don’t know if she’s more pissed about him being disloyal or the fact that he chose such an old hag to be disloyal with. But then I get there and hear that the half-blind, zero coordination, two left footed, central defender and his stop-at-nothing pyscho mother are out of town so there is no-one for me to complain about and blame for all our problems.

To make matters worse the coach was sober for a change and he got there before we did with his team sheets written up and what looked suspiciously like a game plan to me. So bang went another line of conversation as I couldn’t even think about asking for my money back this week. The referee turned out to be pretty darn decent and seemed to call things fairly evenly. There didn’t seem to be a single cow mother on the opposing team’s bleachers and when they sent over that flask of hot-chocolate and a tray of donuts I knew I was screwed out of any chance of baiting them for the whole game.

In the end there was nothing else for it but to sit in my lawn chair and watch my kid enjoying his soccer. Where’s the fun in that?

2012

2009-11-12T09:04:00.001-08:00

So my kid has just finished his high school “soccer” (I use the term loosely) season and we can get back to playing a sweeter, purer, much more expensive version of the beautiful game. As a sophomore it seems to me that time is marching on for him and it won’t be long before 2012 rolls around and we have to deal with the big issue that date brings – which college am I going to be happy with for him? Frankly, I’m getting a little bit tired of his constant “can’t I just enjoy the game?” remarks and so I’ve decided to take a much more active part in his career, which, as I’m sure you can imagine, is very difficult for such an easy going mom like me.

I’ve started by hiring a private trainer to do some one-on-one work with him. I had a few candidates in mind but in the end I settled on his current club coach. This guy obviously knows what he needs to work on and I had been told by other parents that I could expect his field time to increase by about 25% if I paid for one extra session a week, and by about 70% if I went for the full 3-day-a-week package paid in advance through next March. The fact that the coach is rather dishy and will have to come round to the house 3 times a week is an added little bonus for a woman of my age. Unfortunately we’ve had to cut my kid’s music lessons and SAT class to make the time available and I’ve also withdrawn him from the honors calculus and physics classes he was taking as he really needs to lighten the load and get his priorities right.

Since I don’t want to over burden him, I myself have taken over the process of bombarding my target colleges with copies of his highly embellished soccer resume. However, since colleges like the kids themselves to make contact I’ve taken a course in teen speak so that I can pass myself off as him. WTF dude that’s gr8.

I’ve cancelled our subscription to the Fox Soccer Channel in case the skill based European game should corrupt his American mentality and I’ve enrolled him in some specialized classes with some of Michigan’s finest college coaches. Detroit No Mercy will school him in their “Basic Brutality for Defenders” class, while Ferrell State have him signed up “Advanced Simulation”.

So I think I’ve gone to some considerable trouble to make sure that 2012 is a big year in my kid’s life. But do you know what the little shit said to me as I posted his new schedule on the refrigerator door? “Mom, it’s only soccer, it’s not the end of the world!”

Leading The Way

2009-11-04T22:09:00.000-08:00

Jeez I can’t believe that this ‘multiple coaches’ thing is being touted as the latest big thing in youth development. According to this ‘latest thinking’ all kids should be exposed to a number of different coaches throughout their developmental years. Well hello! Maybe the reason my kids are so much better than all your E team dingbats is that we’ve been using the multiple coach approach for as long as I can remember.

Take for example my son’s team. In addition to our paid coach we have a volunteer assistant who was asked to take the team for a few minutes back in 2002 when the coach was running late for a game at our club’s annual Fleece The Parents tournament, and he’s been there ever since. I should have known how dedicated he was to the cause when he showed up for the next game in full club regalia and insisted on being called ‘coach’.

We also have a dedicated offensive coordinator who is Timmy Simpkins dad. Here is a guy who has perfected the fine art of hollering “Get a shot in” every thirty seconds or so. I think the results speak for themselves with this coaching approach as there must be at least 3% of the times when that is the appropriate action for the kid to take.

Emotional support for the boys is provided by life coach and goalkeeper’s mom, Carrie Mae Leejourno, who can always be relied on to put an arm around a vulnerable young man or two as they leave the field after a defeat. As she says, her ‘door is always open’.

Defensive coordination comes in the big round shape of former fourth string football star Danny Gutbucket who gives the boys the sort of clear concise instructions that you need in the heat of battle. I always feel reassured when I hear his powerful baritone imploring some nervous kid to ‘boot it’ whenever the ball comes within 40 yards of our keeper. It’s nice to see Danny’s son Tommy on the way back to full fitness after his stint at Fat Camp this summer.

Our clearly superior tactical awareness could be the result of the input of Loni Wallflower’s dad. Loni is still waiting to make his first start with the team as he enters his seventh season with us but his dad always seems to be able to size up the opposition and know after the first few minutes of play that its time to bring a sub on.

So don’t give me all that ‘latest thinking’ nonsense! We have the finest collection of multiple coaches in the Midwest and the results of all our mis-informed contradictory input from the bleachers will be there for all to see as the boys set out to win back their place after being relegated from division F last season.

Happy Halloween

2009-10-30T06:15:00.000-07:00

Don’t you just love this time of year? Some of the scary things going on are just out of this world! My youngest daughter is always a little bit reluctant to get involved and is usually already screaming “Mommy, mommy, don’t make me!” as we force her into the car. The horror starts as soon as we get there! In the parking lot the smell of cheap perfume and stale alcohol is overpowering as we are greeted by ‘The Parent From Hell’. Behind that friendly façade you just know she’ll stab you in the back without a second thought.

Gradually the place fills up with a cast of characters straight out of a Stephen King novel. My favorite is always the scary clown played by the goalkeeper’s dad. The chills continue as a little old lady with a friendly smile shocks every one of us with a bill for an extra $200 for the ‘coach’s incidental expenses’. The look on all the faces says it all! Sometimes I think it would be in the spirit of the season to send the severed head of this team manager back to the club on a silver plate with a note telling them to do their own dirty work!

My daughter takes her place in a line of little zombies running aimlessly around like headless chickens. You can see the fear in their faces knowing that the head executioner is about to emerge from his coffin. Then a shadow descends upon them and there he is – Coach Bob. I swear I can almost feel his spit landing on my own face at the other side of the field as he terrifies the kids with his screams! What a performance! The nervous smiles on the faces of the parents shows we are all getting what we paid for.

A nice touch this time was the Nazi referee. Marching a few unsuspecting parents to the parking lot for speaking out loud was priceless! However, I have to say that I wasn’t sure if the guy that sidled up to me then couldn’t take his eyes off my cleavage while drooling at the mouth and making sexual jokes was one of the characters or just the father of that new kid on the team.

We all laugh and joke as the kids are ritually terrified by eleven of the biggest, strongest, fastest psychos I’ve ever seen. Where in the world do they get these players?

On the way home I try to get into the spirit of things by doing my own impression of Coach Bob and lambasting my daughter over that goal she gave up to lose us the game in the last minute, but as her big old tears roll down I’m thinking that maybe she’s had enough horror for this year.

A League Of Their Own

2009-10-27T13:34:00.001-07:00

Here in Michigan the Professional Soccer Youth Coaches Homeboy Organization (P.S.Y.C.H.O.) is pleased to announce the formation of a new soccer league designed to eliminate the problems associated with those old dinosaur leagues formed in the eighties by parents who were only really interested in the game. The Premier Elite Development Operation (PEDO) will begin play in the fall of 2010.

Development is at the heart of the reason behind the formation of the new league. For too long youth soccer leagues have been focused on wins and losses on the field. This new league will concentrate 100% on development. Coaches will focus much less on the games being played and much more on developing a steady stream of income.

The confusion between select, premier and elite programs will be eliminated in this new league. Concerned parents will be relieved to know that by dropping the name “Premier Elite” into the conversation at dinner parties their guests will instantly know that their kid plays in the most expensive league in the state.

Only professional clubs will be allowed access to the league in order to promote high standards and to avoid embarrassing defeats at the hands of small town clubs coached by enthusiastic parents.

Clubs with multiple teams in the same age group will not be allowed to designate their teams as A, B, C etc. Teams will be designated as Red, White and Blue to prevent parents suffering the humiliation of admitting that they pay thousands of dollars for their kid to play on the ‘C’ team. Divisions in the league will not be designated as Premier and First, or any other pejorative term. Red teams will play in the ‘Spongers’ division and White & Blue teams will play in the ‘Cash Cows’ division. Promotion and relegation between divisions will be at the whim of the board of directors and we are not even going to try and justify that.

Free roster movement will be a highlight of the league to allow clubs to form teams with a minimal amount of players by bringing subs in from other teams. This will provide kids with lots of field time and the opportunity to play up even though not enough of them showed up at tryouts. This program will be known as “No Check Left Behind”.

Quality will be maintained by strict enforcement of minimum standards for DOCs in the PEDO league. Initial requirements for a DOC will a B License and no more than two convictions for child related offenses or substance abuse. All DOCs must be approved by the coaching board of directors and are subject to the league’s prevailing minimum salary requirements. American citizens need not apply.

Scheduling will be done entirely to suit the whims of the coach and to allow them to focus on their Academy and MRL commitments without having to pay a sub to cover these nice little earners. The playing of multiple games on the same day to suit the coach will be portrayed as ‘family focused’ and in line with USSF ‘best practice’ in spite of being nothing of the kind.

Let the games begin!

The Golden Jiggle

2009-10-26T08:50:00.000-07:00

Building on a successful first WPS season proposals are being discussed to create a Women’s Champions League based on the format of the highly popular European Champions League. Chicago based Trumpet International Television Sports is poised to be the league’s main sponsor and will broadcast the games on its latenight T.I.T.S. TV cable channel. In a bid to attract a wider TV audience the format of the league and games will be modified in a number of ways:

The traditional two halves will be replaced by four periods to increase advertising opportunities. To promote roster development, players will only be allowed to participate in three quarters of a match in a process known as ‘sitting out your period’.

Un-feminine soccer moves, such as heading the ball and slide tackling, will not be allowed in WCL games. This will allow uniforms to be modified to promote a more ‘feminine aesthetic’ with the introduction of volleyball style micro shorts and will obviate the need for any headgear which might otherwise require the player’s hair to be tied back in an unflattering style. In addition, the use of sports bras will be outlawed in a bid to promote the new league’s version of Europe’s Ballon d’Or , the Golden Jiggle.

The new league is the brainchild of famed entrepreneur Pervese Oldude whose business record includes the successful promotion of National Women’s Mud Wrestling Championships. Executive managers of the league will be Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt and Sepp Blatter. Oldude commented: “For too long women’s soccer has not been taken seriously and we are here to put that right”. When questioned about proposals to modify the offside law in the women’s game he replied “What the **** is offside?”

Suspicious Person Alert

2009-10-16T07:21:00.000-07:00

Ahead of this weekend’s games authorities have warned parents to be on the look out for a number of suspicious persons prowling around the soccer fields. These individuals are easily recognizable by their habit of wearing high quality soccer warm ups and expensive cleats in spite of being clearly out of shape and heavily over weight. They have a habit of being verbally and mentally abusive to minors as well as making totally inappropriate remarks such as ‘nice rack’ to female parents. They show an unhealthy need to be alone with children and frequently drop f-bombs in the presence of minors while out of adult ear shot. In addition to consuming copious amounts of alcohol these weirdos have formed their own cult like tight-knit community who back each other to the hilt against any accusations of impropriety. Parents who are concerned about their children being in danger from these characters can generally de-fuse the situation by approaching the felon, pushing a large check into his sweaty hand, and saying “Here’s this month’s payment coach”.

Reclaiming Soccer For America

2009-10-13T10:12:00.001-07:00

It’s time for us to reclaim soccer for America and bring back the halcyon days when we could beat those stuck up Brits with only a butcher, a baker, and an adult-toy-maker for players. For some reason, after we humiliated them at their “own game”, we got it into our heads that what we needed was to invite their washed up has-beens over here to coach our kids. All these years later all we have to show for it is a crowd of knocked-up soccer moms and a national team of six foot twelve long ball punters. Jeez we even had to get President Obama to capitalize on his resounding success with the IOC and speak to the Honduran ambassador to arrange a missed PK so that we could be invited to the big dance.

So, for me, the days of lend-lease in reverse are over and we can repatriate those guys to the land of rain, bad teeth and even worse food. Our club is leading the way with an American coach!

Gotta say he’s made a huge impact already. Two kids were late to his first practice and he made the whole team run until they puked. Now that is coaching! In the first game he instantly spotted that we were tactically naïve and worked hard to snuff that out by having the boys run until they puked. Then the problems with some of the kid’s first touch was put to bed with some in depth sessions of running until they puked. Discipline is also much better since he brought in a rule that every yellow card means you run until you puke, and every red card means you run until your mother pukes.

Tonight is his first ‘meet the parents’ night. I’m not sure what to expect but I’ll be taking my sneakers and a sick bag just in case.

Farewell To The Academy System

2009-10-05T15:56:00.000-07:00

The USSF Development Academy program is entering its third year, during which time no world cups have been played and the USA has won precisely none of them. Therefore the Federation believes it is time for a radical re-think and the academy program will be scrapped in favor of Project Magic Bullet.

The new program will harness all the latest thinking on the implementation of soccer strategies at all levels:

The formation of choice will be the T3 and the federation will work towards developing a large pool of players able to play in the interposer role. USSF will employ NASA scientists to solve the one remaining issue with the interposer role – that of how a soccer player can be in two places at one time.

Based on the work of legendary coach Barney Rubble the concepts of passing and teamwork will be dropped in favor of random dribbling at inopportune moments. This approach should allow the US to not only win the world cup but should allow us to compete at a high level in the World Fanny Dancer championships. The Brazilian Soccer Schools (based in Garforth, England) will act as consultants in this area.

Every youth soccer player who registers with his state association will be issued with a SoccerWave rebounder, a ball on an elastic string, a pair of Footability DVDs and any other random junk advertised on FSC. USSF is fairly certain that these items are standard issue to the street kids of Rio and the Italian men’s national team.

Since the Brits appear to have the finest league in the world we will use their model of youth development and abandon our college based approach in favor of one in which kids do not pay to train but in which 99% of them are abandoned without an education and never get anywhere near a pro contract.

When asked about the alternative proposal to unify all our youth soccer bodies, widen the number of male college soccer scholarships, increase exposure of the professional game on the media, and abandon the MLS franchise system in favor of a pyramid approach, the Federation’s Chairman, Claude Kookooland, said that those ideas were “the sort of crazy thinking that won’t get us anywhere”. He went on to say that he truly believes the world cup is on the way to it’s spiritual home – Brazil.

Sox Scandal Hits Soccer Club

2009-10-02T10:53:00.000-07:00

A previously well-respected soccer coach has been arraigned in Detroit Criminal Court on charges of inappropriate contact with the footwear of the players on her team. Under investigation since 1997, Edna Wellthorpe was the coach of the Unhealthy Alliance Under 19 boy’s soccer team until she was released in June of this year. Court documents allege that Wellthorpe surreptitiously, and with malice aforethought, entered the backpacks of the players and stole their used soccer socks. When questioned about the issue she is alleged to have replied that the sock fairy that prevents such garments ever being found in a pair must have framed her. Allegations that she sleeps with the sweaty shin guards of her holding midfielder are continuing to be probed by the authorities. Investigations into Wellthorpe’s background reveal that she was run out of her home in the Central European country of Lalaland after being found guilty of stealing the worn jock straps of an adult men’s team for which she was the trainer. The case became known as the ‘Curse Of The Phantom Knicker Knocker’.

Counsel for the accused, Les Getrezonable, commented that there was no case to answer and turned the matter back on the parents for allowing their kids to wear such blatantly erotic footwear in the un-chaperoned presence of a healthy young misfit. He also said the club had a burden to bear in that, over a number of years, it took frequent calls from irate parents over missing garments but allowed the coach to continue. Sonia Insayshabel, a parent of one of the boys, said “My Tony has been missing his warm up top ever since the start of the season and it’s becoming apparent that this pervert has taken it. He’s also missing his Nike Total 90 soccer ball so I shudder to think what she’s being doing with that”.

In the interests of protecting the innocent and promoting salacious journalism our reporter refused to ask if there might be any chance that the players or the parents could be in the slightest bit culpable in the matter.

First Division Soccer

2009-10-02T10:50:00.000-07:00

Even though my kids are already way better than your poorly coached, under-funded unfortunates, I’m still always on the lookout for that little extra edge which can help keep my little darlings ahead of your riff-raff. So I was intrigued to hear about some of the ethnic soccer being played on the edges of our dysfunctional community. For example I was told that the Hispanic leagues feature either skillful soccer beyond what any mere American kid could do, or blatant flopping in box with matching outrageous histrionics. My investigations into that little question reveals that the answer depends on whose prejudices you choose to adopt. So anyway, I decided to look around the other exclusive leagues to see what I could pick up.

The Catholic Confessional League has some pretty good players who are all obliged to admit to their fouls when they are red carded. The problem seems to be that all the teams are nick-named The Cardinals. Worse than that, all the girls are called Mary and all the boys are either Peter or Paul – well except for the star striker at Mercy Mercy Me Highschool whose name is Ishmael Goldstein (but I heard the booster that recruited him to the school was let go for not being diligent enough in his background checks).

Michigan Dyslexics Academy (DAM) plays in the 8v8 league alongside the 4 kids who make up the full roster on the famed Schizophrenics United team.

The Boston based Iranian expatriots league have been refused entry to the larger soccer community until they allow the authorities full and unfettered access to their player enrichment program. The league itself has been split into two factions known as the New England Pre Revolution and the New England Post Revolution. I think they have some fundamental differences but like most Americans I have no clue what they are.

At the moment I’m still trying to understand how things operate over in England. It seems that soccer over there is arranged into four “divisions”. I’m trying to get my contact to explain to me why their 3rd tier is called the First Division. In return I’ll try to explain to him how in America, soccer “Divisions” means something entirely different.

Rogue Soccer Clubs

2009-10-02T07:37:00.000-07:00

Thank goodness we have decent people out there to keep an eye on all these rogue soccer clubs. We should all be grateful to guys like Ivan Ajender who has been diligent in keeping us all informed about the shenanigans going on at Midwest Excess ever since the club let him go last summer. I was shocked by his revelation that the money we pay is being used to fund the lavish lifestyle of the guys who founded the club and exploited the market in a blatantly un-American way known as a “business”.

He also reveals that the club’s DOC instructs the coaches to promote a game style of kicking the crap out of the opponents and flopping in the penalty box at every opportunity. Poor Ivan has been so busy making us aware of the scandals at this former employer that he hasn’t had the chance to send back all his trophies or remove all the club’s accolades from his resume now that he has revealed they made him cheat to get them.

Ivan knew all along that one of the club’s coaches was headed to a courtroom and he’s been forced to spend hours editing all his old posts on the club’s website praising this guy now that the truth is out. I just hope that no one considers a great guy like Ivan is in any way culpable just because he didn’t blow the whistle on this dude.

Most disturbing is his revelation that the DOC picks the players on his teams on the basis of how ‘hot’ the mother is. It seems that the A teams are known as the ‘MILFs’ and the C teams are known as the ‘Ten Beers’. It seems to me that Ivan is well out of that place and now that his divorce is settled I hope that he and the mother of his former star striker will be able to settle down together after that slightly distasteful start to their relationship. I for one wish them all they deserve.

The Gender Agenda

2009-09-22T07:16:00.000-07:00

My girlfriend Sonia has gotten herself into a bit of a situation. Her
kid ended up on a soccer team with a clueless dickhead of a coach who
insisted on playing a lame passing game and would bench Sonia’s
daughter anytime she picked up a yellow card for playing in our
traditional robust American style. So Sonia was forced to do what any
right thinking parent would do – she started flaming the guy with some
nice juicy posts on the local on-line soccer forum. Of course she’s
not stupid so she decided to use the name STRIKERSDAD which was
designed to protect her own anonymity and to drop the father of the
little bitch who plays up front on their team right in the shit.

Unfortunately her strategy wasn’t having much effect and so Sonia was
forced into a little bit of embellishment in her posts to the point
where the community now not only knows that knucklehead is a crap
coach, but they also suspect he might be a womanizing alcoholic who
knocks the kids around during practice. Gotta love the power of the
internet.

Anyway, that seemed to fire things up and her STRIKERSDAD account
started getting a bunch of private messages with more “facts” about
this coach. Sonia started to correspond regularly with some girl
called SOCCERMOMIO and before she knew what was happening they were
sharing all kinds of personal details that, to be honest, she wouldn’t
dream of saying in real life. She was actually getting quite attached
to this girl so, before it got out of hand, she confessed that she was
really a woman, whereupon SOCCERMOMIO confessed that she was really a
man and the two of them settled down into a pattern of deeply depraved
sexting which they told their spouses was all just on-line soccer
chat.

Nobody seemed to be getting hurt until the coach decided he had been
defamed and retained counsel to sue the website and force them to
reveal the names of the posters. The papers are likely to have field
day when they find out a respected coach has been branded a child
abuser by a married woman masquerading as a man in an adulterous
relationship with man masquerading as a woman in a kid’s soccer
community.

Poor Sonia is distraught and doesn’t know what to do! I hope things
work out for her because she’s such a nice person. At least, I think
she is a nice person but I’m not sure because I’ve only ever met her
on-line.

Brave New World

2009-09-11T09:56:00.001-07:00

There was a time when it seemed to me that all I needed to do to turn out a superstar was to provide her with one of those crazy soccer balls on an elastic rope that you tie round your waist and kick for about 12 seconds before you realize it’s a complete waste of time and money. Then I moved on to one of those curvy bits of plastic that sends the ball back at you in different ways so you learn to control it, but I realized that my kid didn’t need that since there were already plenty of kids on her team that could send the ball off in totally random directions. Unfortunately I didn’t realize that until I’d already spent more money on the ‘kickback panel’ for my curvy bit of plastic – the modern equivalent of what we used to call a “wall” when I was a kid.

So anyway, I think that this time we really have the answer that the average American parent is looking for in the world of youth soccer: Genetic Engineering.

British Scientists (now there’s an oxymoron) have identified the URNUTz gene which is heavily prevalent in the world’s leading soccer players. My second husband had this gene in huge quantities and was convinced that he had passed it on to our son. Unfortunately he doesn’t know that he’s not the boy’s real father and that the kid actually inherited the XBX360 chromosome which turned him into a lazy fat ass that spends the whole day playing video games.

The leading edge now seems to be the Stockholm Syndrome in which soccer parents seem to start to sympathize with the fruit cakes who peddle this type of nonsense. This group has identified the SOCFUN gene which is inherited by every kid who just wants to play the game because they enjoy it. Thankfully these scientists are working hard on some way to eliminate this disturbing problem.

Here in the USA the approach seems to be less about genes and more about AMI (Average Median Income) theory. Research into this reveals that the higher the AMI the more likely it is that a kid will make the A team.

Soccer Movies

2009-09-08T10:03:00.000-07:00

I noticed some discussion recently about what the best soccer movies are. Unfortunately everyone seems to have gotten the impression that soccer movies should be entertaining. I’m not sure where that crazy idea came from. The movies suggested are the usual suspects including Goal, A Shot At Glory and the perfectly believable Victory in which Pele and Rocky Balboa escape from a German POW camp, but not until after the second half of a soccer match in which they overcome a bunch of Nazis and a partisan referee in a plot line lifted directly from the Michigan State Cup final of 2006.

The problem with these movies is that they don’t really reflect youth soccer. To understand the issues in the kids game you need to look at other movies such as Basic Instinct, in which Sharon Stone demonstrates my often copied interview technique to make sure my kids end on the A team, and Fatal Attraction in which Glen Close shows us all how we should react if our kid gets left on the bench. Billy Bob Thornton’s Mr Woodcock is, of course, directly modeled on Michigan’s most famous DOC, and we all know who the Cheech & Chong of Michigan soccer coaches are.

My own favorite allegory of Youth Soccer is, of course, Jurassic Park in which the Velociraptors represent the little upstart clubs out to change the world but who get swallowed up by the big dinosaurs at the end.

Cash For Clunkers

2009-09-02T07:10:00.001-07:00

In an attempt to continue to stimulate the economy, President Obama is expected to announce today that the Cash For Clunkers program will be extended to cover the youth soccer community. Disgruntled parents will receive a deep discount on new highly efficient coaches when they trade in their current bloated beer guzzlers. Priority will be given to parents still using 1969 or earlier models fitted with single or double knee braces. All heavy front end models traded in during the program will be rendered useless by pretty much leaving them as they are. Qualifying replacement models will be subject to strict requirements including tight cryuff turn abilities and low volatility emissions. Foreign imports will be eligible for double discounts as the government continues with its program of taking a good idea and screwing up the implementation. Questioned on whether or not this was throwing away a lot of valuable experience, and if he was worried about the inherent dangers of young coaches in charge of impressionable teens, the President replied “That’s just stupid! Oh wait, ……. I didn’t mean to say stupid”.

Ready To Step It Up?

2009-08-28T12:38:00.000-07:00

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!

The Seven Habits Of Highly Defective Coaches

2009-08-24T09:05:00.001-07:00

Habit 1 – Be Proactive
Be on the lookout for a new club for next season long before you get found out.

Habit 2 – Begin With The End In Mind
A world cup win by the men’s national team is all that matters. Your academy program is there to provide the best training competition for the youth national teams and nothing else. All that guff about development, fun, lifetime of exercise, sports in education and teamwork is just tree hugger, Obama loving, nonsense.

Habit 3 – Put First Things First
Get the money in your wallet before you kick a ball.

Habit 4 – Think Win/Win
Losing is for losers! Win the frickin’ game numbnuts! Fat incompetent kids are there to subsidize the cost and carry the balls back to your car – they are not supposed to be on the playing field.

Habit 5 – Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood
Invoke the 24 hour rule so that you don’t have to talk to these losers and so that you can get to the pub before closing time. When the dust has settled you can listen to the parent’s distraught voice messages and then make a half assed attempt at understanding what the poor cow is getting at. Thereafter make yourself understood! You are the boss, she has no idea what she is talking about, and the club doesn’t do refunds. End of story.

Habit 6 – Synergize
Soccer is a team game! The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts! By stumbling blindly onto a successful team you can earn yourself a coaching gig with a better paying club and leave these cheapskates behind.

Habit 7 – Sharpen The Saw
Take time out of the hours you are being paid for ‘renewal’. You shouldn’t show up to any more than 75% of the scheduled practices and if you are questioned on this you should advise the complainant that (a) you are attending development classes aimed at improving her kid’s experience, and (b) her kid will be on the bench on Saturday. This year’s Michigan Soccer Coaches Association weekly development meetings will be held in Hooters on the corner of Square Lake and Telegraph Road.

Champions!

2009-08-13T12:42:00.001-07:00

Congratulations to the winners of the 2009 US Youth Soccer national championship series! You guys have earned the right to be regarded as the NATIONAL CHAMPIONS!

Congratulations to the winners of the US Club Soccer 2009 National Champions Cup VIII! You guys have earned the right to be regarded as the NATIONAL CHAMPIONS!

Congratulations to the winners of the 2009 USYSA Presidents Cup - the national non-champion championship! You guys have earned the right to be regarded as the NATIONAL CHAMPIONS

Congratulations to the winners of the USSF Development Academy National Championship! You guys have earned the right to be regarded as the NATIONAL CHAMPIONS.

All you youth soccer players owe a big vote of thanks to the adults who fight and bitch tirelessly with each other on your behalf to fracture the soccer community into a finely tuned rabble of competitive entities instead of one of those crazy, big-government, fully integrated programs that all those successful soccer nations have. Let’s be proud that in the USA anybody can be president, and everybody can be national soccer champion.

High Tech Soccer

2009-08-12T08:22:00.001-07:00

I got talking with one of the other parents on my daughter’s team at practice last night. To be honest I had always pretty much ignored this dude in the past because I thought he was such a geek, but it seems I may have been wrong. He tells me his is working on something called a ‘software algorithm’ that allows him to play out youth soccer games on his computer with a 98.7% accuracy rating! How cool is that? At this point I was so taken with the fellow that I invited him back to my place to discuss it further, but he said something about a re-run of episode 7 season 4 of Star Trek TNG being on cable that he had to see.

But anyway, his computer program considers all the relevant factors. For example, if a team is able to recruit players from a team that finished higher than them last season they should obviously improve right? The guy uses these transfers to generate a factor which he calls Poaching Pointers in his program. He also uses something called the Dick Factor to account for what he calls the A-Hole Ratio in the coach’s approach to the game. These two items are then multiplied by a figure called the Payment Expectation Factor which relates to how much money the parents are prepared to invest in the team. This sum is then subtracted from the number of kids on the team who are in therapy and applied to the game itself being played on the Reality Distortion Field, which must be that new soccer complex over in Macomb County.

For state of the art parents like me this type of tool is going to be essential in the future. Some other poor deluded parent on the team suggested we could just let the kids play the games and see what happens, but where’s the fun in that?

Enhancing Your Soccer Experience

2009-08-11T08:01:00.000-07:00

Get more out of the game by attending one of the Federated Union of Coaches and Knowledgeable United Parents fine soccer seminars. Presented by a distinguished panel of experts these seminars are designed to help you get the best out of the game by appreciating the subtleties lost on the average parent.

In the opening session Ms Penny Pincher CPA will outline how a deep trawl through the certified accounts of non-profit organizations can help you overcome the fact that your own kid’s team had their ass handed to them by more expensive clubs. Using her tried and trusted techniques of rampant speculation you will find the pain of defeat gradually assuaged as you realize that the goals your team gave up are a direct result of financial impropriety and mismanagement on the part of the cheating bastards.

Professor of Psychiatry at the University Of Diminished Responsibility, Doctor Colin Hedphuck, will then present a paper in which he uses examples of personal tragedies experienced by impressionable young women to allow sanctimonious parents to adopt a smug superior attitude. Doctor Hedphuck’s paper is entitled “There But For The Grace Of God” and will be his last major public appearance before he takes a year off to work on his theory that there is absolutely no parental responsibility for the link between inappropriate dress standards, blatant sexual lyrics in modern music, simulated sexual acts in music videos, sexting on social networks, un-chaperoned training sessions, and the growth of inappropriate relationships between authority figures and their charges.

An international flavor will be provided by Elbonian Justice Minister, Maddog Castrator, who will float the idea that the USA should adopt his country’s process of summary justice and move straight to the sentencing phase as soon as an accusation is made against a soccer coach. The minister will suggest to the audience that America’s use of due process is a mistake and that the small percentage of convictions in his country which are subsequently shown to be false are a price worth paying.

A parents only workshop on the threat of alcohol consumption by soccer coaches will be held in the bar at lunchtime.

If time permits in the evening, a youth soccer game may be played and viewed by seminar participants, but this is subject to cancellation if more important issues arise.

Tournament Flyer

2009-08-03T09:19:00.000-07:00

Bring your team to the 25th annual “It’s All Balls” soccer tournament in Downersville, OH.

Played on 25 acres of undulating cow pasture reclaimed from the former Union Barhide chemical plant, the fields have grown into one of the state’s leading causes of injury for elite youth soccer players. We have the finest crews of partisan referees in the Midwest and use state of the art computer analysis to ensure balanced competition and that our local teams always make it to the final. The cost is a very reasonable $350 for all USYSA registered teams with a $100 discount for local teams and a $200 surcharge for Michigan teams. Hotel accommodations will be handled exclusively by our partners at Kickback Motels, whom we are pleased to announce have put last year’s cockroach issue behind them.

Wildcard qualification will be at the whim of our technical director and our exclusive ‘flexible rules’ approach will ensure lots of last minute excitement as we make it up as we go along. Security services will be provided by Big Vicious Dogs Inc, whose trained staff will ensure your comfort by removing any parent who cottens on to the fact that they are being fleeced. “It’s All Balls” is a ranking tournament thanks to the sterling efforts of our DOC Danny Nevaplaid whose years of impartial analysis have resulted in his teams being rated #1 in the state for the past 17 years.

Refunds for withdrawals made 6 weeks prior to the tournament start date will be granted subject to a $100 return fee, a $50 service charge, and a $200 insurance levy. Teams seeking a refund for games cancelled due to weather conditions can go fuck themselves. We look forward to being of service to you!

My Most Humble Apologies

2009-07-27T08:15:00.000-07:00

I guess this is what happens when you put the power of this interweb net thingy in the hands of us little mid-western girls; all those prejudices that we didn’t know we had come rushing to the fore. Thankfully we have a world wide web of helpful folks who can tell us exactly what we were thinking and steer us back onto the right track. Having carefully read the points you have made I can see now that a number of humble apologies are in order and I am more than happy to let you have them.

I apologize to the gay community for the use of the phrase “set up those colorful cones in pretty little patterns”. At the time I thought this was just a funny little dig at soccer coaches but with your wise insight I can see now that this was a hateful slur and I fully deserve your contempt.

Thanks also for pointing out that my use of the term “we parents” is a clear indication of my inbred notion that only two parent families are the appropriate way to raise children. I was not aware of my short comings in this respect but I am grateful for your ability to read the true meaning into my words. Given that I have already shown my anti-gay prejudice, it must be clear to everyone that I am also guilty of anti-same-sex-marriage intolerance and if it wasn’t for my raging anti-deviant bias I would ask you all to spank me for adopting this position.

Mostly, of course, I have to apologize to the manufacturer of the food products who has been defamed by the fact that I have a sister in Nebraska whose name we cannot now mention in these enlightened days. To be honest, when my son’s soccer coach told me that he wanted to smear the manufacturer’s maple syrup all over me and lick it off, I just thought he was being a sexist. However, your wisdom has revealed to me the deeply racist motives in his actions. Thankfully you pointed this out to me before I let the horny little bastard do his thing.

English Accent = B License?

2009-07-23T08:07:00.001-07:00

I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but it sounds like we Michigan parents are a little bit more discerning when it comes to assessing a potential coach for our budding superstars. We don’t equate the coach’s accent with a license equivalent. Instead we use their accent to gage the character of the “man” we are getting.

For example, an English accent is a pretty sure sign that we can rely on the coach to adopt a superior, know-it-all attitude but never actually win anything – a little bit like the English men’s national team when you think about it.

On the other hand if we are looking for a coach who will be a role model for the kids in terms of demonstrating how to make a successful life in spite of being a 5’ 3” red head with mis-spelt tattoos and bad teeth, then we look for a Scottish accent. These guys are also great at teaching the kids how to fight with the linesman and can be relied on to try manfully, but unsuccessfully, to bed every mother on the team.

A fun loving coach with a constant bewildered look on his face is most likely to have a Irish lilt, and neatly arranged rows of color coordinated marker cones are usually the work of a German accented tutor. If I was looking for a coach who can stop the conversation dead in it’s tracks then I would seek one whose opening line is always “When I played back home in Iraq……”.

Finally of course, if I’m looking for someone who insists on being called “Coach” twenty years after he retires, who wouldn’t recognize ‘goalside’ if it sat on his face, and whose solution to every issue is to increase the amount of conditioning the kids do, then I’ll pick one with a nice, reassuring American accent.

Things I Wish The Coach Would Understand

2009-07-22T08:41:00.000-07:00

1 – The modern soccer parent chooses to communicate with you through the medium of a public web-based soccer forum. You should not expect to have any direct conversation with us or have any clue about who is actually posting any criticism of you. We’ll be nice to your face in order to keep our kid on the team but part of the deal is that we get to anonymously ridicule you to the rest of the soccer community. Deal with it.

2 – Unless you regularly deliver state cups followed by deep runs into the regional and national post seasons, you must accept that you have gotten the ratio of technical to tactical training totally wrong and we as parents could see that all along.

3 – You must understand that our kids also play baseball, go to school, have church committments, and occasionally will visit with their Aunt Jemima from Nebraska. With this in mind we expect that you will be at the practice field 30 minutes early to set up those colorful cones in pretty little patterns just in case we should decide to actually show up.

4 – We also expect you to be at the games 45 minutes early so that we have enough time to demand changes to your starting line up.

5 – Please do not get the impression that, just because we have chosen to join your team and are paying you handsomely to teach our kids, we have any faith in your ability to actually do the job.

Press Release

2009-07-16T09:04:00.000-07:00

The Michigan State Youth Soccer Federation announces today that it will launch a pilot program of mandatory substance testing starting in the fall 2009 season. The success of the pilot will be assessed before the scheme is rolled out state wide with a tentative introduction date of spring 2010. The pilot program will focus on the U13 Girls division and will feature random testing at all league, premier and state cup games. Commenting on the system, MSYSF Director Of Mis-Administration, Todd Phuckitup said “We didn’t think we had a big problem here in Michigan but if you listen to some of the things the parents in this age group say it’s clear that they must be on drugs”. Clubs will be entitled to levy additional charges for the cost of having the coach collect a urine sample from parents prior to each game. The program will be marketed under the banner “Michigan – Taking The Piss!”

From The Notional Enquirer

2009-07-14T06:50:00.000-07:00

A youth soccer program on the west coast has been revealed as a thinly veiled cover for a shocking parental wife-swapping lifestyle. These sick parents would routinely take their kids to out-of-town soccer tournaments and meet in their hotel lobby after packing the players off to bed under the premise of them getting a good night’s rest. Then they would draw “Player Passcards” from a pack held by the so-called ‘Team Mother’ and hook up with opposite gender parent of that player. The depraved scheme came to light when one parent threatened to sue the club after she was paired up with the father of a B team player who was subbing with the team for the weekend. Robert Slimeball of the law firm Sue, Cheatem & Spend, acting on behalf of parent Sonia Insayshabal, state that their client is an A team quality superstar and shouldn’t be expected to have to put up with the B team performance of the hapless father who was subbed in during the second period of double overtime. They further state that their client is quite happy to ‘play up’ but shouldn’t have to ‘play down’. Counsel for the defendant state that the club has always been focused on long-term development over short-term results.

Invitation

2009-07-14T05:47:00.000-07:00

You are invited to attend a celebration dinner to mark the achievement of Landon Donovan being awarded the 2009 Hope Solo Trophy for the player who best exemplifies what being a team player is all about. The dinner will be held at the home of David Beckham. BYOB.

Summer Time

2009-07-09T08:36:00.000-07:00

Some of you crazy parents just don’t get it. Even those girlie-men that play in that stupid Premiership thingy over in depressingly gray England understand that summer is the OFF SEASON. The pros over there realize that this is not the time to be playing in tournaments. For them, summer is the time to demonstrate your loyalty to the team by having your agent hawk your ass to any club willing to pay you more than your current obscene earnings. Summer is the time to trade in your old WAG for one that has actually had a hit record in the last five years or so. Summer is the time when newspaper stories of you being arrested for soliciting in a men’s restroom on Clapham common can be relegated to page five.

So if it’s good enough for the so-called professionals what is with you nutcase parents forcing your kids to play soccer in the summer heat?

Responsible parents like me understand the need for some R’n’R so that our kids can give their best when the real stuff starts up again. We will be taking a well earned family break from soccer with a nice European holiday where the only balls on view will be in the tightly packed speedos worn by the greasy bums on the beach in St. Tropez.

The only problem we have is in finding a time when all of us can be together.

By some miracle my hapless son’s academy team has made the national finals, which has kept them training three times a week ahead of the games this weekend. That’s nearly two months longer than his normal season before I purchased him a spot on the team which uses these ‘best practice’ techniques. I also heard a whisper that some totally blind selector might name him to his conference select team to play against the Youth National Team after the championship is over, so now I have no idea when he is going to be available for a vacation – especially since his high school coach is already on the phone day and night trying to get him to go to the illegal pre-season training sessions he’s doing behind closed doors at the dome.

My eldest daughter is, of course, heading into her senior year. At the moment the only offer she has is as a possible walk on at the division four University Of Last Resort in Snowshoe, PA. Given the money we have spent on soccer for her these last ten years I am still hopeful of getting her into UoM, State, or Oakland. Before I resort to using my feminine charms I’m making one last financial bid by having her go to all three college’s summer camps this year so that she can (metaphorically) kiss the ass of the head coaches in person.

My youngest (aka “The Protégé”) is, of course, a very busy little girl. With morning classes in proprioceptive movement and spatial awareness, afternoons with her personal foot skills trainer, and evenings in the weight room, we already struggle to find the time to get her to her therapist on time. I hate to boast, but for a six year old she handles it all very well, and though she hides it quite well I think she’s missing her teammates who are playing in those stupid summer tournaments.

Having said all that, it looks like we will have time to be together in the first week in August which is really cool because we can be in St. Tropez just in time for the beach soccer tournament they are holding!

Need Your Advice

2009-06-19T10:37:00.000-07:00

So what should a responsible parent like me do when the coach is clearly making some mistakes? I’m not sure whether I should take the softly-softly approach or just come right out and let him know that I’m going to tell his wife about that time in the Comfort Inn, Toledo, OH at the Best Of The Mundane tournament if he doesn’t get his act together.

The problem is tactical. He insists on playing a flat back line when a sweeper with breaking wingbacks on the counter is clearly called for. Our holding mid is playing a little too deeply so our transition time is not all it can be because our line of confrontation isn’t far enough into zone of initial impact. To be fair he has adopted a modern ‘one up top’ strategy but is using her as a target player when she should be playing with her back to goal, holding the ball, and then laying it off to the countering wide mids before pushing into the point of maximum opportunity. The girl playing in the hole behind the target is trying hard but isn’t being supported by the type of total football player required for this strategy.

If he could just sort this out we’d be one of the best U6 girls teams in the Midwest.

Tips For New Parents

2009-06-12T18:49:00.000-07:00

If you are the parent of a new kid on an established team you need to make a good impression when you first meet the rest of the parents. Don’t make the mistake of just going up, introducing yourself, and then talking non-stop about your daughter. They’ll hate you for that and think you are a threat to their kid’s spot on the team. It’s much better to open the conversation by asking a question. That way you’ll come across as a little bit vulnerable and they can feel all superior by giving you the information you need. Here are some sample questions that I’ve used to endear myself to the parents of our new teams over the years:

Did your daughter forget her glasses today?
How long have you been putting up with this goalkeeper?
Did you guys ever win before we joined the team?
Who is the slut in the red tank top?
How are the anger management classes working out?
How can they afford this club?
Is the coach really as well endowed as your wife says?

Drop me an email if you need any more advice.

Press Release

2009-06-09T08:26:00.000-07:00

Fox Television today confirms that it has secured the exclusive broadcast television rights to the on-screen version of the famed soccer blog FullRideSoon. The show will broadcast this summer season and will expose a wider American audience to the insanity widely prevalent in the close knit, dysfunctional soccer community. Opening episodes will feature ‘Tryouts’ in which potential team players and their desperate parents are mentally abused by a process widely considered to be the youth sports equivalent of water boarding. In a departure from run-of-the-mill reality shows, the participants will be forced to sit by the telephone for up to ten days before finding out if they have been selected. Additional twists include last minute phone calls to successful candidates to tell them that the coach has changed his mind.

Subsequent episodes will focus on the mental anguish suffered by pre-teen girls as they face the dilemma of playing a team sport in which they are also deadly rivals with their teammates for the single spot on the ODP roster which is the show’s ultimate prize. Audiences will be delighted to watch the girls refuse to pass the ball to each other as their parents stab each other in the back at every opportunity.

Fox has recruited BJ Gonzalez as the team’s coach. With his gimpy leg, shock of red hair, and 250 lb frame, Gonzalez is widely regarded as one of the most physically repulsive coaches in US soccer. The show’s highlight is expected to be when one of the mothers finally gets desperate enough to throw herself at him.

FullRideSoon is the creation of Michigan mother of three Phillipa Rideson, generally considered the only sane soccer parent in the nation.

From Today's Paper

2009-05-28T06:07:00.000-07:00

State Police took advantage of the Memorial Weekend holiday to break up one of the largest organized child abuse rings seen in recent times. Hundreds of demented parents were arrested while gathered at the side of large arenas where they would bay and foam at the mouth whilst their unfortunate offspring would do battle with each other in the height of the midday sun. Victorious parents would holler “You suck!” at the vanquished children and goad their crestfallen parents with loud proclamations of their ‘State Ranking’. If neither team was declared the outright winner both sets of parents would join forces and crucify a hapless adult dressed in a curious yellow shirt with black pinstripes. Police Chief Al Amerrykhanboy had tears in his eyes as he described pre-teen children being forced into cruel training drills and verbally abused at the hands of strangely-accented ‘High Priests’ as part of their preparation to take part in the Michael Vick Soccer Invitational.

New Team

2009-05-22T17:31:00.000-07:00

Well, after what must be the longest tryout in history, it looks like we’ve settled on a team for my youngest daughter for next season.

The process began a few weeks ago with a couple of pre-tryout poaching sessions held by the club’s Director Of Nefarious Activities, Todd Underhand. We then discussed the situation at our current club with their Reassurance Counselor, Bob Undermine, and we even met with the Team Manager, Sonia Underpaid. I was particularly impressed with their speech about the expectation of our “long term commitment to the club” made by their new DOC who transferred over from Wazdar this year following his move from the Wolverines the year before, and The Fire the year before that.

The detail they went into during the tryout itself was amazing! They even sent someone out into the parking lot to check that our vehicle wouldn’t look out of place with the rest of the BMWs the parents all seem to drive. I have to be honest and say that at that point I was worried about the kid who showed up in a Toyota Prius but then I discovered she was only going out for the non-competitive rec team (aka “The Tree Huggers”) where she and her Jesus-sandals wearing parents will fit right in.

There was a little bit of soccer played too but not so much that anyone would have noticed as we were all too busy looking around to see who else had showed up.

The coach is actually an American which was a bit disappointing as it means we won’t be able to play our favorite game of “What do you think he meant when he said………?” in the car on the way home from another routine drubbing at the hands of those kids from the poor side of town.

His name is Bobby Jones but the girls all call him ‘Booby’ which is probably because he has a fine pair of man-boobs that jiggle when he chases after the linesman to dispute yet another bad call. On the other hand the parents all call him “BJ” which I thought were just his initials but supposedly relates to some initiation ritual that all the moms (and one of the dads apparently) have to go through when your kid joins the team.

At the end of the day we gathered in an excited huddle as they named the 18-strong roster and I beamed with pride as my daughter’s name was read out. As I was writing the first of many checks I heard some cynical parent pointing out that only 18 kids had showed up to tryout anyway. Some folks just like to find fault with everything.

Keeper Needed

2009-05-20T07:58:00.000-07:00

Michigan Trash U13 Girls are looking for a goalkeeper to join their roster for next season. This is a great group of girls and parents who are friendly, supportive and will make you most welcome until you start picking the ball out of the net. We are a highly competitive team that is just coming off a great season marred only by a number of basic goalkeeping errors that led to an early exit from state cup and relegation from our league. If our current keeper, her fat ass mom, or two-timing lothario dad are reading this I’m sure they’ll take the hint. Email coach BJ Censeetiv at cuttheslackers@notmail.com for further details.

An Apology

2009-05-19T05:24:00.000-07:00

I want to apologize to everyone for my daughter’s behavior at tryouts this year. She may have given the other girls the impression that she had already been promised a roster spot ahead of time. Nothing could be further from the truth. In actual fact girls like her who have weight issues, two left feet, a complete lack of co-ordination and a lazy left eye, actually have to work harder than most at tryouts. I’m sure that some parents will infer that her limited time on the field, and the fact that she didn’t actually come into contact with the ball, yet still made the premier team, suggests there is something going on. However, more advanced soccer fans will recognize this as a great demonstration of quality off-the-ball play. The rumors that she only made the top team because I agreed to bring my son, (current regional ODP captain, stud, superstar and general soccer god) back to the club that has been trying to recruit him for months are wide of the mark. The subsidized fees for my son and free travel to out of state games also had nothing to with it. You’ll all just have to accept that another part of our soccer dynasty is becoming established at the highest level.

Listen up, all you cynics!

2009-05-18T06:29:00.000-07:00

I know a lot of you think that youth soccer is just all about the money these days but, take it from me, there are still good people out there in our little dysfunctional community. Just before tryouts I took a phone call from my youngest daughter's coach. Here is a guy who is moving on from our current club but even so he still wanted to take the time to offer us advice about my daughter's future. Prior to his call I had no idea that our current club's DOC was actually a "money-grabbing rat who knows nothing about soccer". I also had no clue that my daughter was about to be cut in favor of a much lesser player whose mom is of questionable moral standing, or that there is a clique of parents who choose the team and I'm not one of them! On the soccer side I was a bit surprised to learn that our current club's "glory days are over" due to the falling coaching standards and I was absolutely shocked to be told that our abject failure as a team this past year was all down to the club's failure to properly support the coach. It just goes to show that all those parents who thought that his drug and alcohol issues played a part don't know what they are talking about.

Now before you all jump in and say that this level of service is a one-off, may I remind you that this is the same coach who recruited us to our current club last year when he gave us the dirt on our previous club? So all you losers can stay where you are if you want but I will be moving my daughter to wherever this guy goes because I, for one, understand the meaning of the word 'integrity'.

Community Journalists

2009-05-06T19:22:00.001-07:00

It’s very encouraging to see that Michigan continues to innovate in these tough economic times. With snoozepapers going to the wall, or cutting down on their print editions, I for one am delighted to see the rise of the community journalist. These self-centered enthusiasts bring a fresh exciting subjectivity to sports reporting in our local papers and they seem to have quickly mastered the fine arts of partisanship and inaccuracy so beloved of their professional colleagues. Here’s one of my favorite examples:

Super Soccer Sisters by Neil Downinhommage
A college bound star ensured that Hoocares East cemented their spot at the top of the 3rd Division of the Inbred Farmers Conference last night with a comprehensive 1-0 win over local rivals Hoocares West. Chief architects of West’s downfall were sisters sophomore Mindy, and senior college recruit Mandy Downinhommage, who combined to score the winning goal, dominate the midfield and control the defense. The winning goal came in the third minute of the second half when the ball was dribbled 70 yards and shot by some girl who no-one cares about. The ball rebounded off a post and was expertly deflected off her backside by Mindy to her college-bound sister who faked a trip and guided the ball into the net with her finely tuned, soon to be playing in college, left shoulder. Claims of hand ball and offside were swept aside by center ref “Uncle” Bob Downinhommage who knows a good goal by a scholarship quality player when he sees one. East peppered West’s goal with 20 shots; 2 from Mindy, 1 from soon-to-be-playing-big-time-ball Mandy, and the rest from some other kids who were also playing. No one on West’s team was worth mentioning. College recruit Mandy can expect to take her place in the starting line up next season at Wealthy Donors College where she will play in the recently dedicated Downinhommage Memorial Stadium. Who would bet against her sister joining her before long?

The New Coach

2009-04-27T07:29:00.000-07:00

Once again our school has maintained its record of being the quickest in the state to fire the coach after early season results didn’t go our way. Two ties and a single goal victory over a public school is not what we expect here at Vicarious High, and the writing was on the wall for the poor hapless fool when he subbed my kid out with six minutes still to play in the season opener. It’s never nice for someone to lose his job and I could see that our Athletic Director was troubled by the matter when he left my place the other night to head home to his wife and kids.

The new coach was announced in a press release on Thursday and like any responsible parent I did a little research on him. For some reason they went with a guy who has a soccer background rather than a teacher at the school so we can’t put quite as much employment pressure on him. It took me a little bit of time to find him on the net because he seems to have avoided the usual MySpace or Facebook sites but a bit of perseverance finds him on the professionals LinkedIn network. I had to masquerade as a potential customer of his sheet metal stamping business (whatever that is!) in order to get his details but it’s all good. Nice pictures of an attractive looking wife and two kids so he should be keen to avoid any of the scandals that have dogged our program in recent times.

I added his email address to my daughter’s AIM Instant Messenger buddy list so that she can chat to him about tactical play from the computer she has in her bedroom, and we sent him a nice little introduction including some pictures of myself and my daughter on the beach in St. Tropez last summer. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to know that we are ‘tech heads’ when he receives the texts and pictures we sent to his cell phone.

For his first training session yesterday I helped my daughter pick out a nice little inappropriate top which is not great for soccer but will let him know that she is a girl with a nice sunny disposition. Just between us I’ll confess that I was deliberately fifteen minutes late in picking her up from practice so that she could get to know him a little bit better. When I finally rolled into the parking lot with just the two of them left I could see they were getting on like a house on fire. I think this guy could be the real deal and I’m so glad we’ve gotten rid of his predecessor who really was a bit of a stalker.

My Service To The Community

2009-04-22T10:51:00.000-07:00

I figure that with Spring Break being over for the majority of our high school kids here in Michigan there must be an awful lot of photographs of the seniors having fun out there on their MySpace and Facebook accounts. If you can locate any pictures of your rival team’s stud players with alcohol in their hands, or scantily clad, or in any other compromising position, feel free to email them to me and I’ll happily hand them over to their Athletic Directors without mentioning your name. I’m sure we can get a decent amount of suspensions in place before the conference games start in earnest. Anything I can do to help you out with those close games is my pleasure!

Mama Mia

2009-04-16T05:55:00.000-07:00

PRESS RELEASE

Following the news that soccer legend Mia Hamm is to join Southern California's Slammers FC as a coach, the Michigan Drama Queens are pleased to announce the appointment of their very own soccer icon. Former pro Brian Blunder will join the club as director of mis-management on his release from prison next month. Blunder spent three seasons playing at the very top in England's Unibond Conference (South) development league with powerhouse Skegness Albion Reserves. A tough tackling center back, Blunder was famed for having ended the careers of many of England's finest young prospects with his robust style. Following a three year suspension for match-fixing activities Blunder retired in 1993 and joined the then fledgling English Cage Fighting Association where he fought under the name of Psycho Driller and achieved an impressive 6% win rate in his 268 professional bouts. Deported back to his native USA in 2001 his entrepreneurial skills began to show as founded the famed Tax Dodgers Soccer Club and quickly racked up an impressive bank balance. His dedication to his players was admirably demonstrated when he continued to write explicit letters to the girls on his former U16 team following his imprisonment on steroid trafficking charges. Blunder was elected to the sex offenders hall of fame in 2004. The Michigan Drama Queens are pleased to be able to exploit the USYSA's lack of a credible nationally enforceable risk management system in order to be able to bring this legendary figure into our community. The Drama Queens are a non-profit club operating on the edge of reality and our motto is "For The Love Of Our Kids".

New Style Tryouts

2009-04-14T07:38:00.000-07:00

Do you get stressed at tryouts? Do you hate having your kid's fate decided by some over-weight has-been who thinks that just because he sat on the bench for Tranmere Rovers in a pre-season friendly against Pumpherston Miners Welfare that he qualifies as an ex-pro? Are you sick of having to fill out the same form for the umpteenth time for some loud mouth, uber-gossip, meddling mother, who only does the team manager's job to keep her personality by-passed offspring on the team? Well this year is going to be different! With the economy sinking faster than Ted Kennedy's car off Chappaquiddick bridge those of us who have money to spend can make the rules and I for one am going to make the best of it. This year my kid ain't trying out for no stinkin' team. This year the club and coach is trying out for me! At last, in the world of youth soccer the customer is king!

The club that gets my business is going to have to have a clear direction spelt out in an elegantly written mission statement which I expect to be full of the sort of reassuring platitudes that my daughter can copy word for word into her college application forms. The club should then be able to demonstrate a blatant disregard for this mission statement with a finely crafted win-at-all-costs approach to the state cup, MRL, and any game against those bitches from Michigan Push.

I'm looking for a club that trades on its long track record of former glories to get skillfully challenged players like my son onto a decent college team. The power of a recognized brand cannot be underestimated and I'm willing to play top dollar for a strong, established American name like Canton Chelsea.

As for the coach, well I don't want anyone who has lived in the USA long enough to get found out. A nice fresh English speaking Adonis with the morals of an alley cat and an eye for the older woman is just what I'm looking for. A basic understanding of soccer might be helpful too. I also want a coach who takes the modern approach of coaching during the training sessions and then letting the games play themselves. We don't want some bone head who shouts instructions from the sidelines to the point where our kids can't hear what we parents are hollering at them.

The Power Of The Internet

2009-04-09T11:13:00.000-07:00

The modern soccer parent has to use all the tools at her disposal if she wants to fully exploit the talents of her offspring. We all know that coaches with unintelligible accents, out-of-state competition, and cleats fashioned from the flesh of any animal listed on World Wildlife Foundation’s endangered species list, are the very least that we must provide for soccer’s next generation. But still we need to find that little extra edge that will help us fully stab our teammates in the back. I’m thinking of subtle little details such as the human growth hormone that I’ve been injecting my youngest daughter with.

In considering such details it strikes me that many ambitious parents may overlook the power of the internet in developing our soccer superstars. As you would expect, your blogger-in-chief has this down to a fine art.

Stop number one for any aspiring parent on the information superhighway should be www.youtube.com. Traditionally this has been used by the soccer purists to show supposed highlights of their inept kid’s play. Whilst not wanting to underplay the value of this approach you should also know that there is much more that can be achieved here. I myself have been posting game footage and commentary from some of our rival’s matches because I think it’s important that the wider community understands just what a bunch of dirty, fouling, cheating cows the Michigan Hags U6 girls are. I try to capture the opposing parents in their moments of exuberance as often as I can, and I have an excellent track record in taping and posting their fantastic skills at dropping the F-bomb.

I also think I’ve done my bit for promoting an improvement in the standards of our referees by posting clips of some of the seriously bad calls that these overpaid buffoons have made against my kid’s team this season which have robbed us of the state title. Clearly it is in all our interests for me to highlight this conspiracy.

Youtube also gives us the chance to promote the concept of being fully informed. For example when my son was in a run-off for the last starting spot on our roster I made sure to post footage of his teammate screwing up with the amazing regularity he shows in our big games. In the interests of full disclosure I emailed the link to our coach under my pseudonym of Teamplayer1.

A close second to youtube is the wonderful www.myspace.com. This is a great tool in letting potential college coaches see that your offspring is a well rounded individual and more than just a soccer player. When I heard that the head coach of the University Of No Mercy Detroit was going to be at my eldest daughter’s season opener I was sure to send him a link to her myspace showing her at the bible study group she joined that morning and at her first piano lesson. In the interests of promoting all the girls on the team I sent him their myspace links too. I’m sure that all those pictures of them in their bras and panties with the Bud Light cans in their hands will let him see what a fun loving bunch of kids they are.

The ultimate internet tool for the leading edge soccer parent is the on-line soccer forum. I use this as the medium of choice for communicating with my kid’s club, coaches and high school. It really is much more convenient than actually having to speak to some of these bozos. It also saves you from any embarrassment you might feel at having to make a suggestion. A simple anonymous diatribe on the net can be much more effective in getting your point across. Often however, you may feel that your issues are not being taken seriously. Advanced users will get over this by posting the same sentiments under a number of different on-screen IDs. This is simply a way of letting the club know that the groundswell of opinion just happens to be in line with your own personal way of thinking.

Selecting a moniker for your virtual presence in a soccer forum is a fine art that should not be rushed into. Adopting something obvious like TygersG93mom#9 will mark you out as a rookie and you can expect some serious comeback. The only time you should adopt such an obvious name is when you are not that person but want to post hateful messages in her name. Not that I would ever do such a thing.

Finally please always remember that there are laws of libel and standards of decency to which we must be held. A cryptic ID which is aligned to a fake hotmail account are no guarantee of complete anonymity in a world where your ISP can be traced. So take my advice and pop down to your local library or internet café. Log on there, and create your on-line account safe in the knowledge that you will never have to be held accountable for your words. It’s the least you can do in the name of your kids.

Levelling The Playing Field

2009-04-01T07:08:00.000-07:00

The MHSAA released the following statement today:

As part of our charter to promote competition amongst high school athletes while avoiding more damaging lawsuits, the MHSAA continually reviews and updates its policies with a view to providing a uniform level of incompetence across the state. For some time the association has been concerned that a number of situations may conspire to give an advantage to certain schools. To address this situation the MHSAA will immediately implement its Level Playing Field Initiative. MHSAA has partnered with Michigan State University to offer a post-graduate diploma in Advanced Soccer Mathematics to assist athletic directors in understanding these policy changes which can be summarized as follows:

In calculating a school’s classification by enrollment numbers a multiplier factor will be assessed:
1 – Private schools will be assessed 1.75 x enrollment because the MHSAA really wants to stick it to the rich kids.
2 – Catholic private schools will be assessed the same 1.75 multiplier AND will have one goal subtracted during each game to compensate for the influence of having a higher power on their side.
3 – A mulitiplier of 1.21 will be applied to high school teams which roster more than 5 club/travel soccer players. The exception to this will be teams who roster players from the Eagles club because our Chief Executive’s daughter plays for this club. In addition high school teams who roster players from the Wazdar club will actually have a negative 0.75 multiplier assessed to compensate for the distinct disadvantage that having players from this club provides.

A ‘fat factor’ of 2.3674 will applied to teams who routinely provide a locally based referee who is old and out of shape. This factor will be increased to 2.8765 if the opposing team can provide a doctor’s certified confirmation that the referee is clinically obese. The factor will be removed if any referee should actually expire during one of his rare forays outside the center circle. An additional fat factor of 0.250 will be applied if the ref has one knee brace, or 0.375 if he has two knee braces.

Midtown High School will have two goals subtracted and a red card automatically issued to their goal keeper for all games that are refereed by that cantankerous old guy who doesn’t like their assistant coach.

During regional finals all teams will be allowed to dress one parent in the opposing teams colors. If a team is defending a narrow lead but is under pressure in the closing minutes the ‘ringer parent’ will be permitted to run onto the field, threaten the ref and have the game abandoned with the score in their favor. Private schools can have two ringer parents because they always get more than everyone else.

The MHSAA has gone to the trouble of retrospectively applying these rules to the spring 2008 season, and is pleased to be able to tell you that the outcome is that all 4,325 games played ended in a 0 – 0 tie.

Meet The Parents

2009-03-25T07:37:00.000-07:00

With the girl’s high school season underway our team held its traditional “Meet The Parents” get-together last night. What a trip to the zoo that turned out to be!

We started off by going round the room introducing ourselves, stating which team our kid was on, and giving a little background ‘color’ information. Geez! Emily Hotshot’s mom should get a special award for the amount of times she was able to use the phrase ‘only freshman on varsity’ in a sixty second time period. For some reason that seemed to provoke Sonia Ovalooked’s mom into a bit of a tirade about “flaunting yourself” but it all settled down when they both agreed to hook up in the parking lot after the meeting to sort things out.

The too-much-information award goes to the wacko father who talked about the ‘healing power of sports’ and his hopes that being on the team would help his daughter get over her bi-polar disorder, anorexia and suicidal tendencies. I made a mental note to cancel the spaghetti lunch I was planning to host for the team.

The goalkeeper’s mom made a nice appeal for team unity, asking for an end to the name-calling that went on last year, and saying that she hoped her daughter’s senior year would be memorable for all the right reasons. I thought it was quite touching although I’m not sure that her cancerous, fat-ass, bitch of a daughter can follow through.

When it came to my turn I decided to just play it straight and let them only have the pertinent information such as the fact that my daughter plays travel for the most expensive club in the state, has a personal private skills trainer, and that we purchased a spot on this year’s ODP roster for her. I think the silence that followed is a clear indication that I had made my point although it was a bit dis-heartening to see the Athletic Director shrug his shoulders when the varsity coach asked him what ODP was.

Regretfully, by the time we got to the freshman team no-one seemed to be listening and the head coach was overheard saying that the didn’t know we had a freshman team.

Randy Ogler, President of the Boosters, started his presentation by welcoming his new wife to the board in her position as Treasurer. His ex-wife’s position as registrar remains vacant at this time, but his first wife has returned as social secretary. He asked for nominations for the registrar’s role but for some reason none of the fathers seemed willing to let their wives volunteer. Randy did ask for a few moments of silence to remember the previous treasurer but personally I thought it was a little bit tacky to be asked to bow our heads to honor someone who took his own life after being charged with embezzling $115,000 of our cash.

Finally it was the turn of the coach to lay his words of wisdom upon us. He made a big thing of reminding the girls about the school’s policy on alcohol and how, with prom, graduation, and open houses coming up this is particularly important. Poignant words from a man who will be back to riding the bus with us to away games this year following the loss of his driving license for a DUI conviction.

Yes, it was quite a night. Sometimes I think we are the only normal, well-adjusted family in the Midwest.

Reefer Madness

2009-03-20T07:12:00.000-07:00

Life seems to be just one dilemma after another at the moment. Normally I’m such a positive person but right now I just don’t know what to do about a really delicate situation. It all started last weekend when I had signed up to be one of the parent chaperones on and out-of-state trip that my son’s academy team was making. I guess I didn’t know that it had been set up as some sort of ‘lads and dads’ weekend and that I’d be the only mom there.

The problem really began when we packed the boys off to bed to be well rested for the next morning’s game and we settled down in the hotel bar for a relaxing beverage. I guess that maybe I was getting a little bit too much attention from the gentlemen because after a while there seemed to be an awful lot of glasses on the table and I was feeling just a little bit light headed. Fortunately our very supportive coach offered to escort me outside for a breath of fresh air to try and clear my head. I must remember to let his wife know what a helpful guy he is next time I bump into her.

So there we are standing behind the air-conditioning unit, taking in the night air, and him helpfully assisting me to adjust my lingerie, which somehow had become hopelessly twisted, when a sweet pungent odor reaches my nostrils. Someone was very definitely getting their head together out there. To my experienced nose it seems like they were using a very nice Panamanian Red too! Nice gear! I couldn’t help but sneak a little peak and that’s when the horror struck. Standing there in full club warm-ups with reefer in hand was our very own center back Jorge Norealyank. Fortunately the coach seemed to be fairly distracted at the time and didn’t see him so I coughed a little warning cough and Jorge took off into the night with our little secret.

So, what’s a girl to do? It’s a tough situation. These are heavy matters we are dealing with and not something to be taken lightly. I know that I should do the right thing and turn him in to make more roster space for my own kid, but supposing I turn him in and the whole team gets eliminated from the program?

Some People!

2009-03-19T08:43:00.000-07:00

Some people are never happy! You do your best to be a good sport and you get slapped in the face! What is the world coming to?

My eldest girl’s high school team played Patsy High the other night in what we all knew was a mis-match before we even started. The district mandates that we open the season with a local derby and for some strange reason our AD always seem to select our unfortunate friends from across the tracks. We have mercied them five times out of the last six games and even beat them 4-0 in what was old Todd Jentilman’s last game in charge before my boosters had him fired for his lack of ambition.

So the game kicks off and it’s not long before I’m getting that feeling of Déjà vu which lets me stop concentrating on the game and allows me to focus on whether or not they have any tasty looking fathers amongst the great unwashed over on the opposing bleachers. It’s already 7-0 by the time we make our first substitution and for some reason the opposing coach rolls his eyes as we bring on the last two seniors we have on the bench. What is his deal? We’re backing off by pulling a couple of starters and we get that kind of reaction! Our coach instructed the girls that they could only score with headers from then on although I accept that our striker Emily Goebbels might not quite have understood the idea when she dribbled the ball around their keeper, stopped it on the line, and got down on her hands and knees to tap it in with her head.

When we win a PK at 9-0 we do the right thing by bringing up our fat ass goalkeeper to take it only to be met with a barrage of boos from their fans. Yes, of course we celebrated the goal but that was our keeper’s first score in four years of varsity play so she deserves to be cheered wildly, don’t you think?

If you ask me the MHSAA is to blame with their stupid mercy rule says that the game only ends with an eight goal differential provided it’s gone into the second half. So that leaves us at 12-0 as the ref brings the first half to an end, giving our trainer the chance to be a decent guy by helping their keeper wipe the tears from her eyes.

With their kids having traveled all the way across town for this match our coach obviously thought they’d want as much playing time as possible in the second half so we did the right thing by playing a nice passing game to stretch things out for them. The boys in our student section appreciated our sportsmanship and got in on the act by hollering ‘Yo!’ with each subsequent pass. I counted 35 passes in a row before one of their kids got the ball. Then, do you know what the unsporting little bitch did? She turns around, blasts the ball into her own net, and they all troupe off the field and straight onto their bus before the blast of the ref’s whistle has even died away!

On the way out all I could hear were their parents muttering about ‘at least such-and-such a school just played the game’, or ‘they could have pulled the seniors’. One of them even suggested that we should have played our JV team! Now that would have been just disrespectful!

Up And Running!

2009-03-16T08:47:00.000-07:00

Well, at last, my eldest daughter’s high school junior year soccer season has started in earnest! March’s tryout week has come and gone, ending with the traditional naming of the varsity roster that was chosen before Christmas. All that remains of the selection process is the blind disregard of the letters of complaint to the Athletic Director, and the tearful anonymous posts on the local on-line forum.

I just don’t understand why some parents get so stressed out at this time of year. Really, in your heart of hearts, you know whether or not you have donated enough to the booster’s fund for your kid to be sure of a varsity spot. The only real interest for me is trying to work out which parents will be far too proud to let their darling daughters accept a spot on the JV roster. Sometimes it can be as long as ten days before these sad losers are back in your face bragging about how their star is playing SuperMRL Premier Academy Elite with some out of state team that takes advantage of Michigan’s laissez-faire attitude to the sporting seasons. When will they learn that just because you are good at the game doesn’t mean that you are a ‘player’?

We play our first game tonight! It’s the traditional, non-conference, season opener against our old friends from the local, hopelessly under funded, public: Patsy High School. I’m not sure how I feel about the district forcing us to play these cannon fodder teams right off the bat. Sometimes it gives the girls a false sense of how we stack up. Still, it’s a home game, so if we mercy them early enough I can still be home in time to watch Dancing With the Stars.

Sports Section Game Report

2009-03-12T05:38:00.000-07:00

Local police were forced to intervene following the acrimonious end to a regional semi-final soccer play off match on Saturday morning. Referee Todd Gimpyleg had called the game between Lowell Standards and Holier Than Thou Catholic with 5 minutes still on the clock after he was accosted on the field by parents from the opposing teams. Lowell Standards was leading the game 1-0 on a goal by standout striker Colin Hacker. Hacker, who is the prime suspect in the armed robbery of a Detroit liquor store, had transferred to Lowell from Holier and has had his eligibility questioned by his former coach at Holier, Sly Manoovers.

The Lowell team were tiring late in the game and struggling to protect their slender lead when Hacker took a cleat to the jaw in a high tackle by Holier center back Tony Noalterboy. Noalterboy was sent to the bench where he was absolved of any responsibility by school priest Father O’Forkristesake. Meanwhile Hacker was being carted to a waiting ambulance when a fan, sporting a Lowell sweatshirt, ran onto the field and assaulted the 300lb referee by over tightening the bindings on his knee braces. The fan was subsequently identified as Hacker’s father Bubba who was home on compassionate leave from state prison following the death of any sense of integrity in the local school system.

Feeling threatened, the referee called the game and awarded the win to Lowell who were leading at the time. Holier fans were incensed and accused the Lowell fan of deliberately forcing the ref to abandon the game at a point where they were under pressure and had lost their star player. A second fan, wearing Holier colors and later identified as Hacker’s estranged mother, Emily Skank, entered the field of play where she proceed to head butt the ref, slap her former husband, and berate her injured son for being a “thieving, alcoholic, junkie traitor”. Police were forced to restore order after Lowell coach Wynn Atnecost flew into a rage when Holier’s priest asked him if he wanted him to hear his confession now or later.

MHSAA officials confirmed that the result will stand unless their attorneys advise them that they might lose any subsequent law suit. When asked if the association’s current insolvency following the financial awards made against them in the wake of their mis-guided defense of the Title 9 case might influence their thinking, the official replied that he had no comment.

Meanwhile Hacker should recover from his injuries within six weeks meaning that he will be fit to stand trial on the robbery charges where, as a juvenile, he faces a four year stretch. Informed sources advise this newspaper that his time in therapy may be considerably longer.