Soccer Thrones

I signed up to be a girls soccer coach for age 8 and under. I wasn’t pleased with the coaching my daughter received, and I wasn’t particularly happy to see a merciless prick destroy my daughter’s team by controversial means. Soccer isn’t my sport, but I am fond of winning and seeing improvement. I played basketball from a tender age and watched my sister play soccer in high school. I have a competitive spirit, a loud voice, the will to win, but I lack a little patience and have much to be desired in the way of social skills.

My daughter’s team, the red team, was mentored and trained by Coach D. Coach D is a twenty-something girl with no competitive bone in her body, and questionable life decisions as of this date. I’ll give her a pass on the latter as kids these days just aren’t growing up as fast as they used to. The red team has talent, no doubt about it, as we have a few amazing strikers and a few decisive girls that can guide the ball towards the goal. However, we’ve lost every single game, and our practices are not structured. It’s time for a change.

Twice, we faced the pink team and lost miserably each time. The pink team has a coach with his daughter as the best player on that team. This is fine if the other girls have equal playing time on the field, but this wasn’t the case. Furthermore, his daughter loves to push our players, and they typically don’t hand out yellow cards at this age. One of our players was so afraid of this girl that she refused to play after she had been pushed. The coach of that team also said some discouraging remarks towards our players, including towards my daughter who was trying to defend our goal. My motivation, as coach of the next season, is to see him lose.

                

A month ago, Coach D informed us that she didn’t want to be a coach next season. Girls that are my daughter’s age are short of coaches, so I knew this might be a problem. I told her that I was thinking about signing up to be a coach, and she told me that she would like to be my assistant (which I was fine with). Coach D went on vacation for a week and asked my wife and I to take over practice and the game. Guess what happened? We ran a very structured practice, and the game was very close. We had our team implement a formation that showed that we know how to play soccer.

When Coach D came back from vacation, something changed. She had signed up to be a coach for two different leagues. This made no sense, and it kind of infuriated me as I had received a verbal commitment that I would have an assistant. Also, there’s the matter of scheduling conflicts that she will inevitably face while coaching two teams. It’s not fair to her players. I think she was offended when hearing of me signing up to be a coach. Now, not only will I have to destroy the pink team's coach, but I will have to beat my daughter’s coach.