From the Crap Part of LoCo

My daughter has played travel soccer for the past five years. Over that time, she's been a part of some decidedly mediocre sides, playing at the lower levels of the DMV soccer pyramid. She's a decently-skilled kid, but she's small, and she's lazy as hell, so she's been surpassed by kids who've worked much harder to get better. I'd like to say that there's a life lesson in there, but I never learned it, and I'm afraid I've passed on my work ethic in addition to my size.

We hired coaches based on height.

It's possible that she's played her final game in Loudoun Soccer's red and black - tryouts just ended, and hers is a competitive age group. I'll be bummed for her if she doesn't make a team, because she claims to love the game, but we'll both get over it.

If this is, in fact, her swan song, I think I sent her (and her teammates) out on a high note.

Last November at the Club's annual gala, I won an auction for a customized message from Michael Davies and Roger Bennett, better known in soccer circles as Men in Blazers. I had no idea what I was going to do with the message, but I was drunk, and I thought it was a cool thing to have in my back pocket.

During the Fall soccer season, my daughter's team proved to be hard-working (most of them), highly coachable, and rapidly improved as a group. They finished that campaign with a 3-3-2 record, narrowly missing promotion to the first division of the Old Dominion Soccer League (ODSL), which is itself the lowest of leagues in the byzantine local landscape.

My blog, my kid.

In the Spring, they continued to improve, gaining confidence as their results became incrementally better. They started with a 1-3 performance in a tournament against teams from much higher divisions and leagues, though they were in each of those matches until the late stages. They got out to a 4-1 start during regular season play before running into a physical and talented squad and falling, 7-1. They bounced back from that drubbing, learning a lot of lessons about intensity and effort, and went 2-0-2 in a Memorial Day tournament, again against ostensibly much better competition. They tied the team that ultimately won the event, giving that team its only blemish. They scored seven goals and allowed one across the event's four matches. And my lazy daughter scored her team's only goal in a 1-1 tie, on nothing more than sheer effort. It might've been her finest moment, save a sick slide tackle she pulled off in the game in which she's pictured above.

In their final regular season match, with promotion to the first division assured, they faced the same team that bullied them a short month ago. In the movies, this is where the plucky underdogs complete their narrative arc, punch Biff in the mouth, and ride off into the sunset. In reality, the girls played their asses off, fighting back from a 1-0 deficit to tie the game, only to yield a late goal on a fluky bounce to lose, 2-1.

They won't remember that part, most likely. They will, I hope, remember  the video that Davo and Rog made for them. I wasn't sure if they'd like it, or even get it, but the feedback I've received has been amazing. Hell, I was happy enough to do this just for me. To know that it made a great group of kids happy (and made them thing I have some serious juice) is serious icing on the cake.