He shoots! He scores! Sort of ...
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- July 29, 2023
- 654
Years and years and years ago, I was forced to play soccer.
Well, maybe “forced” is a bit misleading; let’s say “required.”
As a college freshman, I had to accrue two semesters of physical education, something I thought I’d left behind in high school, a time when getting an easy A appealed to me, even as having to endure stuff like wrestling and square dancing certainly didn’t.
Yes.
You read that right.
Square dancing — replete with country music and steps like allemande left and the do-se-do — was an actual part of the curriculum, the same as math, science and social studies.
I believe the objective must have been legitimate enough, with coeducational interaction all but nonexistent in gym class, and there remains — in my memory, at least — something a bit noble about having boys and girls engage in working together, even if the landscape was so dotted with land mines as to create a sense of doom and dread, something that kept a person awake at night.
And Lord knows I had enough trouble sleeping back then, what with worrying about failing physics and not writing well enough in my European literature class to get the grade I really needed.
But I somehow made it into Notre Dame, and that’s where the game of soccer and I had our first acquaintance, such as it was.
The first thing you should know about my alma mater is nearly everyone who got accepted had been an athlete of some distinction in their high school days, which meant they were bound to be seriously disappointed when ND denied them athletic scholarships.
“But at least we got in,” they probably told each over consolation beverages, drowning their sorrows in a place utterly oblivious to their pitiful whining, a campus used to housing national champions.
I was operating under no such delusions of grandeur, having left little sporting legacy behind when I matriculated to the home of the Fighting Irish, who, in my first few months there, earned a title in football and ended UCLA’s 88-game winning streak in basketball.
Amid all that pomp and glory, I was trying to somehow not embarrass my family by flunking out, having labored mightily to overcome a D in American history, of all things, during the first grading period, an ignominious effort that landed me in the dean’s office, where I came to understand I wasn’t in Ohio anymore.
“You realize, I’m certain,” said the overseer of the freshman class, “that there is no shortage of applicants waiting to take your place.”
By the time I was on track to making the dean’s list for six straight semesters, an achievement no doubt abetted by my mother’s novenas and my father’s blind faith in me, I needed to make a choice as to what sport to select for gym class that spring.
Why I chose soccer is a question I cannot answer as even now, nearly 50 years down the road, I have trouble figuring my rationale.
The best I can tell you is it wasn’t archery, if you get my point.
Twice a week I trudged to the farthest reaches of campus, a weeded field so isolated as to be bordered by a busy South Bend street, where semis delivering foodstuffs to the dining halls roared past, belching noxious diesel fumes in their loud, toxic, acrid wake.
That was my soccer baptismal and explains a lot of what followed.
What I knew about the game, from firsthand experience, was it required an immense amount of pointless running, back and forth, all in the futile hope that somehow, you might get to kick the ball.
Goals were as uncommon as Protestants in that Catholic place, but when the semester was over and I’d gotten my A, I forgot about it.
Flash forward a few years: I’m sitting in my sport editor’s chair, listening to Pink Floyd on the tape deck, comfortably numb in a newsroom that was my home away from a three-room apartment where I had a steak marinating in advance of an evening cookout.
Two soccer bigwigs strolled into my office and, without so much as a “please” or a “thank you,” began to berate me for what they believed to be serious shortcomings in our coverage of a niche game that, truth be told, I couldn’t have cared less about, though I told them we’d run every game result they’d choose to supply.
“Not enough,” one huffed, to which the other one puffed, “Not even close,” which put me in the uncomfortable position of having to explain the realities of a small-town newspaper to a couple of small-time powerbrokers who had no interest in hearing the truth.
This was the late '70s, and soccer was just beginning to extend its tentacles over the sporting landscape, tentatively probing the soft underbelly of local media, looking for a vulnerable way in.
I fought the good fight for as long as I could, saving space for bowling and golf and other activities that involved a lot more subscribers, but in the end I agreed to kick out the first ball at the local association’s grand opening, posing for pictures and smiling.
Now soccer is played everywhere and is no longer a glorified babysitter for hyperactive kids simply running off a sugar high.
A few short months after that first volatile futbol collision, a quite pretty, charming and altogether lovely lady visited me in that very same sports department office, seeking to publicize soccer tryouts.
Without hesitation I agreed to do all I could on her behalf.
Years and years and years later, we’d be married on the beach at Kitty Hawk, proving I know absolutely nothing about anything.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560. He invites you to join the fun on his Facebook page, where nil-nil games aren’t acceptable.