That's me, in the yellow.
When I mentioned that I have been playing soccer for 17 years, I didn't mention the position I played. For those that know me, it's really not all that surprising to discover that I was a goalkeeper.
I'm loud, proud, tough and.. well, a tiny bit aggressive. Just a little. A smidge. Really.
Okay, okay, I admit it, there's something totally awesome about running down a loose ball and just accidentally clipping the opposing player's legs and sending them flying through the air.
This isn't about my love of full-contact sports, though, and we'll save the stories of the yellow cards and broken femurs for another entry.
Anyway.
I'm a goalkeeper. I don't play the position anymore unless I have to, mostly due to the fact my body just doesn't like to stretch into acrobatic feats and bone-crunching saves, but when I do get a chance to stand between the posts?
Oh. Man.
What a feeling! What a homecoming. It's like the metal bars reverberate and say, 'Where the heck you been, kid? We missed you!'
When I step into that box, it's an instant sense of belonging. I know what to do here, I know how to react, I know how to feel, and I know how to play this position. Most of the time I get that feeling on the field as well, but there's this word that fits how I feel between the posts.
When I play keeper, I've got swagger.
So, it seems totally natural that when I was putting feelers out for a coaching position, I slyly slipped in that I was a goalkeeper coach.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Winner!
I've been working with the starting goalkeeper since the beginning of the season, and while I've trained keepers in the past, I've never actually worked with one who didn't know anything.
Literally.
This girl knew the name of the position. That's it.
Still, this was a big opportunity to mold a player into what I feel is an ideal keeper. Quick on their feet, powerful, confident, strong, a leader.
This keeper had none of these traits when I first met her. She was quiet, shy, timid, and incredibly insecure. But, I have to give her a lot of credit, she was most definitely tough.
This girl never said no during a training session. No matter how many times I made her dive and get up, no matter how many rounds of footwork ladders I made her do, no matter how many times I made her do push-ups for a sloppy goal or how many times I yelled at her for not catching properly, she just kept working.
And as the weeks went on, I watched her swagger grow.
She's still not entirely confident in her position yet, but playing goalkeeper takes a special kind of attitude. This girl hasn't completely developed it, and like all goalkeepers, she's incredibly hard on herself. But, if she keeps working and learning and listening, she's going to be great.
Sometimes, though, it's really, really hard to play goalkeeper. A true keeper always puts the blame on herself, and this girl is no different. After a tough week of losses, she was feeling pretty down about her performance, and even after a 2-0 win last Thursday, she looked like she'd just buried her dog.
I pulled her aside after practice yesterday, after an equally grumpy expression was set on her face for most of the session.
"Listen, kid," I said. "I know how hard it is to play this position. I know it's frustrating, I know it's tough, I know that sometimes you're so mad that all you want to do is scream and run as far away from soccer as you can."
I took a breath.
"But you are not the only person on this team. From this point on, you have to find a smile, no matter how bad you feel. If you look miserable all the time, your team is going to be miserable. If you look like you're not having fun, you're team isn't going to have fun. You have to find that little spark of joy and hold onto it with everything you can."
"I know," she said with a little smile. "I will."
I didn't feel the need to tell her that she wouldn't learn to appreciate her position until long after her high school career was over. She wouldn't understand the role she played on this team and to her teammates, until the painted lines have faded from the field of play, and the scores were long forgotten.
I simply told her, that even if the world is crumbling down about her, and nothing was going right, she had to fake a smile, fake the confidence, and play for the 21 other girls on her team, not for herself. And that maybe, the longer she worked at being confident and happy and full of joy, the more real it would become.
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