Chapter 35: Looking Out the Window

By early August I was dead tired, and even looking forward to school starting up again. The workload had to be less than what I was struggling with during those hot weeks in July and August.

The kids were learning too fast. Even with the help I had, and the amount of time we were spending with each group, it was hard for me to stay ahead of them. I was spending about twenty hours on the field with the kids and the coaches, running drills and supervising scrimmages and games, as well as coordinating my top-notch helpers. I didn't know what I would have done if I didn't have my four friends helping me out. They were able to fill in the gaps I inevitably left in my plans, covering for me over and over again.

In between the hours spent on the field, I put in another ten or fifteen hours a week trying to stay one step ahead of each group, planning out drills, strategies, games, and scrimmages. Whether we were playing three-on-three, four-on-four, or full scrimmages, I felt I needed to have an idea of the makeup of the teams beforehand. It was too easy to let the kids decide who they wanted as their teammates if we left that decision until it was time to play. Too many times that created an imbalance among the teams.

I spent another ten to fifteen hours each week writing down my impressions. Each day, after camp, I would write down detailed notes of how that particular session went. I wanted to be able to refer to my notes and see where I could improve things, if I should do this again the next year. I also wrote down remarks about many of the players in camp, noting improvements in their play or in their skill levels, places that might need more work, and sometimes even predictions about how far they would go in their soccer endeavors. I even wrote down some of the funny stuff that happened, as a reminder. I made sure every kid enrolled got mentioned at least once a week in these journals. I was thinking that I might be able to distill the information I wrote down and make up a presentation for each player at the closing party for the kids and their parents.

The young kids took the least amount of time, because their skill levels were still pretty primitive, even after a few weeks in camp. The middle group was tougher, because their coordination and reasoning skills were more defined, so they progressed rapidly. From my work with Davey and Kip, along with my own experiences playing at that level, it was pretty easy to come up with plans for this group.

The real challenge was keeping up with the competitive group. By the end of July, the number of kids taking lessons in this group ballooned from twenty-five to more than forty students. Most of them were junior-high kids who were seeing this as a stepping-stone to playing on the high school teams. They were all fiercely competitive, and a few could even be called driven. I knew one thing: they were driving me nuts. After all, I was the one who had to do all I could to stay ahead of them, and they were fast. Capital F Fast. I even had a couple of kids who had played on the J-V team as freshmen, who were hoping that working with us would be the way they could get noticed enough to make the Varsity team during late summer tryouts. I repeatedly told them that none of us had any influence over Coach Neville's decisions, but they didn't really believe me. Truth be told, I was probably lying. If Eric, Trent, Jorge, and I all came up to Coach with the same name of a player unfamiliar to him, he would most likely take a chance on the player. I just wasn't ready to put myself on that kind of firing line quite yet, though.

School was scheduled to start on the last Tuesday in August. I really wanted a week off so I could just sleep in and not worry about anything, so I scheduled our last day of camp to be Friday, August 20. We scheduled Saturday as the party day, and arranged to have access to the park and the main soccer field all day. We scheduled the middle group's party for the morning, the youngsters for about noon, and the older kids for around four o'clock. I devised some fun and easy drills, mostly based on a weaving passing drill, to showcase the kids for their parents. Watching them weave around each other down the field, in teams of three, was pretty impressive for the parents, who typically only saw their kids during games.

I also set up a thirty-minute full-field game for the first two groups before handing out awards. Parents loved that kind of thing, I had discovered, and every kid got to play. The younger group played seven-on-seven, since one kid was on vacation and couldn't make the party. The middle group played a nine-on-nine game, with Tessa and Jorge working the goals. Every kid played the whole game, and the parents were thrilled when the game ended up tied, 1-1. Tessa assured the tie when she deliberately slowed her steps in defending against a crossing pass, and Davey Wilkinson put the ball past her into the back of the net.

After the game, I handed out certificates to every player. I had recruited Molly to hand-letter the names on them, since she had the best handwriting of anyone I knew, and I used my journal notes to talk about how each player had improved over the course of the summer. The parents all applauded every kid, and there were a lot of very happy players, proudly showing off their certificates. It made it all worth the hard work. I even got about a hundred dollars in extra tips from parents, by way of thanks.

For the competitive group, I knew that a weaving pattern wasn't going to do it, so during the last week of sessions, we worked on showy passes and schemes. Heel give-and-go passes, special signals for throw-ins, and taking high passes off their heads and then running upfield without letting the ball touch the ground, keeping the ball in the air with chest, shoulder, head and knee touches, were going to be the showcase for these players. After the demonstrations, we set up two half-fields. Between the instructors and the kids, we had enough players for four full teams, with no subs, so we played two games simultaneously, across the width of the field. Everybody could play, and all the parents could watch both games at the same time. It was a little chaotic, but it worked out okay, mostly because the kids all understood it was just for fun. They had gotten enough competition over the past few weeks, so they were able to put aside those drives for one afternoon.

After the game, I handed out certificates to the players, and once again used my journal to explain how each player's game had improved. These older players didn't hold the certificates with the same amount of pride as the younger ones, but that was okay, because they held their new skills proudly instead.

What made me the happiest, though, was the courtesy nearly every kid displayed to me and the other coaches. After the ceremony, the parents and kids were gathering up their belongings, and the five of us were underneath the awning I had rented to provide some shade for us for the day, finally relaxing after several weeks of work. I glanced up and saw Mariko Lee, one of our junior-high students from the competitive group, walking toward us.

"Sean?"

"Hi, Mariko. What's up?"

She looked around shyly at all of us. The five of us were standing or sitting in a loose semi-circle, and she looked like she was feeling a little bit more on the spot than she liked, as the others looked on curiously.

"I ... I just wanted to thank you all for what you've done for me," she said. "I really enjoyed this camp."

While I knew nearly all the kids had a good time, and they had gotten better at their games, I was still a little surprised that a kid this age, normally very shy and self-conscious around high-school kids, would be bold enough to walk up to us alone to thank us.

Mariko tentatively held out her hand, and I shook it gently. She stepped over and shook Jorge's hand, and then stepped up to Eric, standing leaning against one of the support poles, a cold can of Coke in his hand, and held out her hand.

"Ah, hell, ain't no handshake gonna do it," he said with a smile. He stepped up, towering over the little eleven-year-old, and wrapped his arms around her and hugged her. She was taken completely by surprise, but only for a moment. She put her arms around him and gave him a squeeze, a huge and happy smile on her face.

Tessa was next, and she hugged her, too, and so did Trent, and so the precedent was set. She moved back over and hugged Jorge, and then gave me a hug, too, before running off and rejoining her family. By the time she ran back across the grass, other kids were gathered around, jostling for position as they all started shouting out thanks and farewells. Lots of parents came up to join in the melee, and before we were finished, we had been hugged, thanked profusely, had our hands thoroughly shaken, and I had had another two hundred dollars pressed into my hand as tips.

After we had picked up the cones and flags, taken down the awning and packed it away, and gathered up our balls and jerseys and gear and packed it into our cars, I gave each of my friends their cut out of all the tip money I had received. Sixty dollars each made us all feel wealthy.

As we stood by our cars, almost unwilling to drive away from each other, I thanked each of them in turn for all their help.

"Hey, we had fun, didn't we?" said Trent.

"Oh, yeah, but I'm gonna sleep for a week," said Jorge. "These kids wore me out."

"Ah, you're just a slacker," said Tessa, smiling at Jorge affectionately. They had really gotten to be good friends over the past few weeks, only partly because of the position they played. "We could have gone another week."

"Maybe you could have gone another week," noted Eric. "Us guys, we've got tryouts and practice coming up next week for school, so we aren't gonna get a whole lot of rest."

"Oh, man, I forgot about that," moaned Jorge. "There goes my plan to sleep for an entire week."

Shit. So had I. The one I really felt sorry for, though, was Trent.

"Hey, buddy, when do you leave?" I asked.

He looked both excited and a little sad. "Tomorrow afternoon," he replied. "I've already got most of my stuff packed up. We're hauling a little U-Haul trailer down with us."

"Hey, Trent, I forget. Where are you going again?" asked Tessa.

"University of South Carolina."

"How long to get there?" she asked.

"A couple of days, I guess. We're leaving about noon tomorrow, and we're thinking we'll get there sometime Monday afternoon. I'm supposed to move into my dorm room sometime between four and six on Monday, and we've got team meetings and tryouts beginning Tuesday morning."

"Is your whole family going?"

"Yeah, me and my parents and my sister."

"What about Danielle?" asked Eric.

Trent smiled. "She's moving into her dorm next Saturday," he said.

"That's so great, that you guys were able to go to the same school, even so far away," said Tessa.

"It took a lot of convincing, but it all worked out," said Trent. "But, hey, I've got to get going. I've got to finish packing, and then Danielle and I are going out to dinner with all our parents." He gave Tessa a hug, and shook Jorge's hand. He grasped Eric's hand a moment longer, and they nodded to each other, silent acknowledgement of their connection to each other. He turned to me.