Becoming Selene: It’s Been a Good Run
As a soccer parent, I’m feeling all the feels reading this, our first Becoming Selene submission.
Thank you so much to our submitter for sharing this story.
Soccer is the sport here, but I suspect baseball, lacrosse, basketball, theater and band and other parents will choke — as I did — with recognition.
“An almost perfect late fall day. Cold, crisp, and sunny. Folding chairs littered the sidelines as parents arrived, coffees and blankets in hand, to cheer. Cheering for big kids now, many of whom drive themselves and don’t always have parents on the sidelines, depending upon game distance and busy lives.
The U-19 parents are an interesting group, far less rabid than we once were. We see these games through a different lens now. Probably the lens we should have always been using. We want them to play well, and wins are still good. But mostly, these games are the culmination of the skills these kids have been building for the last 10-15 years. Even at the upper club levels, the screaming that once represented the sidelines has mostly given way to good-natured appreciation for these 17–18-year-olds who, in the throes of college applications mixed with senioritis, are still getting up early, suiting up, and coming out every weekend and to play (sometimes multiple) 90-minute games. The players don’t beat themselves up (or others) as much for mistakes now. They, too, can laugh at some of it. They made a choice to spend their senior fall doing this and they’re enjoying it.
Mostly.
As I watched my senior playing his last-ever club game, I could still see in my mind’s eye the little guy who first started soccer wearing his shin guards over his socks because “that felt better.” (and I – having never played – did not know better). I could see the one who picked blades of grass from the soccer pitch and scored in the wrong goal. In my big, muscular almost-adult, there are still shades of the middle schooler who rose through the ranks and seized every extra training opportunity. The one who spent the COVID year doing so much work with a ball in our backyard that the bricks on the patio side of our house lost most of their paint. I remembered the endless uniform washing. The balls all over the house. The perpetual stink in the mudroom from wet, grassy cleats. I cringed at pushing hard for potential college recruitment – nearly impossibility for most male players these days. I pictured all the fields we’ve been to throughout the Southeast and beyond. A million lost water bottles. Camps, showcases, tournaments, road trips, and hotels. Hours spent between games at Chick-Fil-A or Panera or Moe’s. Some trips were good and we were happy and talked and enjoyed ourselves and each other. Other trips, particularly some in more recent years, were less good. Those were marked by little sleep, hormones, short tempers, annoyance. The money we’ve spent on soccer could have funded a hundred family vacations.
A big smile spread across his face as the game wound down. Another mom saw it too and remarked, “He really enjoyed himself out there.” I watched him laugh with his fellow defenders. They put their arms around each other to pose for a group picture most would roll their eyes at on a normal day. I watched him grab his bag and shake hands with the coach. And I watched his eyes look for me as he walked across from the player side to the parent side one last time.
I’m grateful to have seen him look.
I walked out to meet him and said, “That’s the last club game I’ll ever see you play.” He shook his head at how the time has passed. “Yeah. I played my last game at the same position I played my first game. It’s been a good run.” I nodded. Yes. Yes, it has.
It’s a sign of the times that we had driven to the field separately, since he came straight there from spending the night with friends. He didn’t really need me to be there. But I’d like to think it mattered a little. We got into our respective cars in the parking lot, and I waved goodbye and told him to drive carefully.
Then I cried all the way home.”
