The Beautiful Game

When my kids were in kindergarten, I started coaching their soccer teams through the local recreation department. I love soccer. Loved playing it as a kid, then in college, then out in Colorado, and for one summer on a ragtag team of women from teenaged to middle-aged in Ireland. So of course I loved coaching it, too. It was gratifying to see the kids – my own and their classmates – progress from kindergarten all the way through elementary school, at which point I moved to the spectating side of the field.

It was a bit of a bummer last fall when my youngest and her classmates missed out on their last year of rec soccer – and their last chance to vie for the coveted Halloween Cup, that annual end-of-the-season tournament, played on the home field, right next to the playground they’ve all been swinging and sliding and climbing through since they were toddlers. My friend Mike and I still got to coach the kids in practices and intrateam scrimmages, but it wasn’t quite the same without the competition of playing against other teams. And while I sympathized with the kids, I also felt a twinge of my own remorse for missing out on this last year of coaching.

Still, I hesitated this spring when I was asked to help with my youngest daughter’s club team. Just having two of my kids playing spring soccer was a big time commitment, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to add one more thing to my plate. But in the end, I figured if I was going to be sitting at practices and driving to games anyway, I may as well help out – as long as I didn’t have to be in charge of planning practices or any of the administrative stuff. Basically, I agreed to be there to follow someone else’s lead.

In all the years I’ve coached (both soccer and skiing) I’ve been lucky to have some strong leads to follow. I’ve learned from the people I’ve coached with – and from watching many of the coaches who have guided my kids’ athletic endeavors when I’m on the other side of the field (or the ski slope) with the spectators.

This spring’s coaching experience was different than coaching fall soccer. Many of the kids, I met for the first time in April, when we started kicking the ball around inside. Some of them I knew from two years ago – pre Covid – when they’d first played on the same team with my daughter. The only one I’d known since kindergarten was my own. One of the perks of coaching, though, is that you get to know the kids differently than when you’re a parent on the sideline. And this group of girls was super fun to get to know. They are silly while still being competitive. Smart. Sometimes a little sassy. Tough. And supremely coachable.

Scott, whose lead I got to follow this spring, is one of those coaches who has an innate ability to connect with players. If you’ve ever had a good coach, you’ll know what I mean here. They exude good energy. They’re almost always positive. They expect you to play to your potential and will tell you – in a constructive way – when you can do better. When you have a coach like that, you always try your hardest, always want to play more, play better.

These girls worked hard and had fun through the season, whether it was 90 degrees and oppressively humid or 45 and raining. Girls who early in the season told me they simply couldn’t kick the ball with their left foot were, by June, making defensive clears, attacking crosses, and even a goal or two – with that left foot. Girls who had been timid during the first games became confident. Girls who hardly knew each other off the field somehow connected on it – learning which passes to send and which runs to make and how to work together.

Sometimes, on the sidelines during games, we coaches meted out tactical advice. Often, we just watched the girls play and relished their love of the game. Who knows where soccer might lead them? Onto a high school team, maybe, or even college. To a team in a Colorado ski town, or a village in the west of Ireland. Perhaps, someday, these girls will be on the coaching side of the field, guiding the next group of youngsters through the beautiful game.

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's July 1, 2021 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record.

A Season Not Lost

Soccer season, like so many other things over the past seven months, did not go quite as planned this year. On the day that would have, in a non-pandemic world, held the annual Halloween Cup, we woke up to four inches of heavy wet snow, with more falling fast. I guess the silver lining is that we didn’t need to worry about cancelling due to bad weather and slick roads, since Covid had already canceled the event for us.

In the grand scheme of things, whether kids get to play soccer or not may seem trivial. But any semblance of normal these days is a big deal for them – for all of us, really.

For most of the summer, we weren’t sure if the kids – high school, middle school, kindergarten – would get a soccer season at all. While my older children have had something like a regular season in middle school, my 6^th grader’s team (which I coached with a friend) was restricted to practices and intra-squad scrimmages. No games against other towns. No joyfully-past-their-bedtime Under the Lights tourney in Littleton. No Haverhill Cup.

But for a few hours each week the kids were on the field, together, kicking the ball around and learning the game a little bit better. Two days a week, they made their way through stretching and wind sprints, skills work and tactical talks, all without the potential reward of earning a W or raising a trophy. They listened and worked hard. And out there on our home field, we all smiled. A lot.

In this year of so much weirdness, I think soccer was a happy highlight for the kids. I know it was for me.

One player showed up to the first few practices in a cast-like boot to protect a still-healing broken foot. He did as much as he could, so hampered, then jumped in full steam as soon as the doc cleared him to lose the boot. Another kid arrived one day complaining, in a charmingly happy manner, that he hadn’t had time after school to change out of his restrictive “school picture day shorts.” A few of them boogied mid-scrimmage one afternoon to music playing from a nearby field. Once, a quick, furious downpour left the kids soaked – and scrimmaging under a brilliant double rainbow.

At different times throughout the season, my daughter and I lamented some of the differences of this year compared to other soccer seasons. She missed the challenge of competitions, the power of playing good defense, the thrill of scoring goals. I missed thinking about which lineup would work best on any given day and watching the kids figure out this “beautiful game” little by little.

Last October, her team made it to the Halloween Cup final only to watch the opposing team’s players lift the candy-filled cup at the end of the day. It was my third time in five Halloween Cups coaching a runners-up team. Maybe next year, I told my daughter then. This year’s tournament would have been her final Halloween Cup, and mine, too.

Alas, this October there would be no penalty kick shootouts and dedicated fans, no games played just after dawn and just before dark, no triumphant wins and disappointing losses. This October, there was no gathering of teams from throughout the region, no gaggles of kids running around the Dow and swinging through the playground between games, no concession stand stocked with baked goods and crockpots of warm food, endless pots of coffee and countless volunteers.

Instead, our season finale was just 15 kids and two coaches who love soccer, on the field together. We ended the season with a long scrimmage session. The kids passed the ball and made some moves and scored a few goals. They took some hard knocks and helped each other up. There was less intensity than the normal end-of-the-season competition, but more laughter.

Probably, if someone asked, I’d say I wish it had been a normal soccer season. I wish these kids who are moving on to middle school next year had their chance to be the big kids on the small field. I wish I’d gotten to coach them through one more tournament. But in a year that has often involved seeking out silver linings, we still managed to find plenty of them on the soccer field. 

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's October 29, 2020 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record.    

Soccer & Community

The population of Franconia swelled to about three times its normal number last Saturday as several hundred young soccer players – and their entourages of family and fans – from towns throughout northern New Hampshire and Vermont descended on the Dow fields for the Halloween Cup.

This annual tournament has become a traditional end to the soccer season for kids in grades 3 through 6. It’s one last chance to show off skills, play with friends, and hang around eating tournament food and goofing off on the playground between games. For the Lafayette communities of Franconia, Easton, and Sugar Hill, it’s also a big fundraiser for the local recreation department.

Although the focus of the day is soccer, the underlying theme is community. Pulling off an event this big truly takes a village – or, in this case, three villages. Each year, at the end of that third Saturday in October, I find myself feeling proud of and thankful for our community, which is small in number but big in heart.

It was still dark when I arrived at the soccer field with two of my kids in tow Saturday morning – and dark again when we left, more than 12 hours later. The lights of the new pavilion – built in part with past Halloween Cup funds – shone through the dimness of pre-dawn, revealing a crew of friends and neighbors already at work.

Throughout the day, I saw an array of people filling shifting roles: parent-food server-coach, teacher-fan-referee, sibling-grill master-former player. Among the volunteers were a multitude of soccer moms and dads, selectmen, retired teachers, the local elementary school principal, and coaches and teachers from the high school. At least one first-year college student came home for the weekend to help out, and there were others on the sidelines.

My son, after his own four years of Halloween Cup competition, became a timekeeper, score runner, and trash collector for this year’s event. He also made his first foray into refereeing, sharing officiating duties for a handful of 3^rd and 4^th grade games with the principal of his elementary school.

He marveled at how small the Halloween Cup players seemed, even though he was playing on that same 3^rd and 4^th grade field only three years ago. And he seemed as happy – or happier, even – as a Halloween Cup worker as he’d been as a player. His highlights of the day were filling the Halloween Cup trophies with candy before most people had arrived at the fields, and blowing the shrill airhorn to mark the beginning and end of several games.

For me, the best parts of the day were varied, broken down by time and responsibility.

I spent the morning with the 5^th and 6^th grade girls team I’d helped coach through the season and was proud to see them play their best soccer of the year. These girls built their own sort of community through the season – coming together from two different rec programs (Bethlehem and Lafayette) to form one team. They are an awesome bunch, and they earned a spot in the Halloween Cup finals Saturday, where they narrowly missed winning the candy-filled trophy.

That afternoon, my focus shifted to the 3^rd and 4^th grade fields, where I joined the ranks of volunteer referees to call handballs and offsides and remind these younger players to keep their feet down during throw-ins. As my focus has turned gradually toward middle school and high school soccer, it was fun to see these smaller, newer-to-the-game kids – including a few I coached last year – play their hearts out on the field.

Later, as the sun sank below the trees, we watched the Lafayette team play in the boys’ finals, on a field lit by temporary lights and emergency vehicles. Around us was a crowd of others who’d been there for hours, watching, coaching, working, cheering.

Among the spectators was a group of high school boys who had reffed games earlier in the day. Not so long ago, these boys were the ones on the Halloween Cup field. On this night, they celebrated the home team’s winning goal as if the younger players had just won a high school championship.

Somewhere along the way – whether in 3^rd grade or high school or beyond – I hope these kids recognize the sense of community that encompasses these events and this place. Because after the trophy is presented and the victory candy shared, after the lights are turned off and the fields are cleared, that community remains. We help each other, cheer each other on, pick each other up after the tough games, and celebrate the victories. Together. Because there are many times, far beyond the soccer field, when it really does take a village – or three. 

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the October 25, 2019 issue of the Littleton Record.

Soccer Lessons

Remember that feeling, I told my daughter Saturday afternoon. The one of elation that came after you buried the shot and were mobbed by happy, screeching teammates. Remember that one as much as the other one: the sad disappointment of landing on the wrong side of a hard loss. Both are important.

The first time I ended up in a dog pile of happy, screeching teammates I was a freshman in college, and my soccer team had beaten a tough rival. I don’t remember the import of that game, but I’ll always remember that feeling of pure, adrenaline-fueled joy and the camaraderie that comes with being part of a team celebrating in a grass-stained, sweaty heap. That was the same season we lost to another close rival on penalty kicks. Our last shooter was our senior captain – a four-time all-American and steady as they come – and she launched the ball well over the cross-bar, sending our hopes of defending the national title with it.

You win as a team, you lose as a team. And doing either by penalty kicks is a pretty awful way to end a game. But it’s a lot less awful when you win. It took me until college to learn that lesson. Our girls, mostly aged 10 and 11, learned it during Saturday’s annual Halloween Cup after a series of five games where they dominated play – but still ended up without the coveted candy-filled trophy.

We tell our kids – in sports and school and friendships and life – to give it their all, do their best, try their hardest, and good things will come. But sometimes you can do all that and still end up on the losing end. Sometimes you don’t make the team. Sometimes the best team doesn’t win. As country music icon Mary Chapin Carpenter put it in a song: sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.

Our girls were feeling utterly squashed after the last ball was kicked Saturday. They’d played all day with grit and heart, allowing only a few shots and no goals against them through three regular games, a semi-final, and the championship match. Yet, after a scoreless overtime and a tied first round of penalty kicks, it was the other team celebrating the win, and ours left stunned and teary-eyed.

My coaching partner and I have played a lot of soccer. We’ve felt the highs of winning big games and the lows of tough losses, and we love the game through it all. We told the girls we were proud of them, to hold their heads high, but our eyes brimmed with emotion, too, behind our sunglasses. It’s one thing to go through the disappointment of losing; it’s something else entirely to watch your kids and their teammates feel a loss so deeply.

My freshman year of high school, my team won a single game all season. But I loved soccer, loved playing, loved the team, wanted to get better. A year later, I was cut from the first club team I tried out for. I’d wanted to be on that team badly, and I was devastated. But I got back out there, practiced even harder, kept playing, and made that team the next season.

If I hadn’t been cut and felt that disappointment, I wouldn’t have worked so hard to get better, and I wouldn’t have made it onto the team the next year. Without that team, I wouldn’t have had a chance of playing in college. I would have missed a lot of soccer highs.

I was reminded after Saturday’s shootout of another, similar outcome two years ago, when another team of Lafayette girls made the finals and lost on penalty kicks. After a game like that, all you can do is cry a little, then get up and move on to the next thing. Keep practicing, keep trying, keep playing.

The girls from that game two years ago just completed an undefeated season of middle school soccer. I’d bet most of them can reach back in their young memories and recall the disappointment of coming so close to winning their own Halloween Cup, only to be defeated on the last kick. And I’d bet they all have other memories, happier ones, of scoring goals and winning games and celebrating together.

I wish I had a photograph of my daughter in that moment after she made the goal and turned around with an exhilarated leap to face her cheering teammates. I wish I had a photograph of all the girls at the end of every other game that day, when their smiles were proud and happy, when they were at the high end of emotion. Perhaps the best part of being a coach – at any level, with any sport – is seeing that look on the face of someone who has worked hard, made a breakthrough, seen effort transformed into some form of victory.

I don’t know how long these girls will play soccer, but I hope it’s many more seasons. I hope they keep playing, keep learning, keep loving the game. I hope they work through the lows to reach the highs. I hope along the way they all end up in a few grass-stained, sweaty, exuberant, celebratory heaps on the field. And I hope that’s the feeling they remember best.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the October 24, 2017 issue of the Littleton Record.

Soccer Love

At the end of the day we were cold, sopping wet, and exhausted. The 3^rd and 4^th grade soccer team I coach had played five games over the course of 10 hours. They’d experienced soccer firsts – three penalty kick shootouts, one last second (literally) goal, and a sudden death overtime – which is a lot to throw at 8- and 9-year-old kids. They handled it all like champs, and I bet this is a day they remember for a long while.

I love soccer, have loved it for as long as I can remember. The game has been an integral part of my life from childhood onward. Soccer led me to friendships in high school and focus in college. It introduced me to places and people I wouldn’t know without it – in Europe during a brief high school tour, in Colorado when I moved there after college, and in Connemara where soccer became a comfortable connection to a place far from home.

I started coaching when my kids were in kindergarten because I wanted to introduce them to the sport. Over the last five falls, I’ve had the privilege of introducing their friends and teammates to soccer, too. Coaching is a labor of love – and of balancing various skill and interest levels, kid-sized attention spans, and parental expectations.

Sport can be transformative, and as a coach of young kids, I get to witness that transformation up close – both in my own children and in their teammates. I am fully aware that the kid who is a complete goofball in 2^nd grade may morph into one of the strongest players in 5^th grade, and that the one who is the biggest and most coordinated in 1^st grade won’t necessarily be the strongest in 6^th grade. I know that the 4^th grader who has never touched a soccer ball before, but who comes to practice all season and pays attention and works really hard is going to make steady improvements.

Through soccer I get to watch my older daughter, who loves fashion and embraces femininity, transform into this tough girl who will dribble through opponents and fight for 50-50 balls against kids much bigger than she is. It is no wonder that her soccer idol is Alex Morgan, who somehow always looks as if she’s just stepped out of the beauty parlor, even as she’s burning her soccer opponents and scoring goals.

I watch my son tackle the sport with a completely different mindset, steady in the backline, confident now in taking command of a defense. Where my daughter is all bursts of speed and changing pace, my son is methodical, thoughtful, steadfast. Never one to be left behind, their little sister, whose soccer season ended two weeks ago, practices push passes against her dresser when she is supposed to be getting ready for bed. I know I could just take the ball out of her room, but I kind of love that she wants to play soccer all the time.

I have watched their friends grow through the sport, too, seen them transition from clumsy kids with too-big shin guards to soccer players who pass the ball with confidence, make moves, support each other. Saturday I got to see one group of kids overcome nerves and bad weather to play together as a team. Three times I watched five of these children step up to the penalty kick spot and take their best shots. I got to share in their relieved exaltation when they scored, and I knew their frustrated disappointment when they missed. Fifteen times, I watched our young goal keeper of the day stand, sometimes on the verge of tears, and face PK shooters from other teams.

Soccer can be a tough sport, and coaching is not always easy. It makes for sometimes hectic family life, frenzied dinners thrown together between practice and bedtime, and a week’s worth of homework crammed into non-soccer days. I spend more time thinking about the teams I coach and their young players than I probably should. And each year, somewhere about two-thirds of the way through the season, I wonder why I do this to myself. I think, sometimes, how much simpler it would be to just drop the kids off at the start of practice and pick them up at the end.

But I don’t think I could do that. I love the game too much. I love seeing the kids, my own included, develop a love of soccer and an understanding of how to play it. I love when a 1^st grader tells me she’s done her soccer homework, and when a 3^rd grader proudly shows off his new goalie gloves, and the smile from the kid who always says thanks at the end of practice.

Saturday, our team lost in the finals of the annual Halloween Cup on our home field. We were cold and wet and bone-tired. But I think the kids felt a sense of accomplishment at making it so far. As I watched these young soccer players disperse into the pouring rain of a darkening night, huddling under umbrellas held by their faithful fans and climbing into warm cars, I felt proud of their growth over the season and their perseverance through a long day. And I felt lucky to be their coach.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the October 28, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.