Fields of Screams

Soccer Shocker

My soccer-playing career began at the innocent age of ten. My mother suggested signing me up to play in the local soccer league. She told me that she thought I would have the perfect build to play the sport if I lost some weight. I had already been swimming on my neighborhood swim team during the summer, but swimming didn’t happen in the fall. Soccer did. I had been very overweight at the beginning of the summer swimming season, but I had gone on a diet and lost a lot of weight during the season. Since I wanted to lose more weight, I took my mom up on her offer. I didn’t know anything about soccer, Pelé, or the World Cup. I just knew that I liked kicking a ball around. Since my only experience with soccer had been when I had kicked a soccer ball around just for fun, my mom signed me up for the lowest level of soccer for my age group.

I rode my brand-new blue Centurion Custom DLX ten-speed bicycle to the first practice as quickly as possible. I rode my bike so fast that I could have sworn flames were coming out from beneath the tires. I covered the mile-and-a-half bike ride from my house to the practice field in what seemed like seconds. I zoomed through neighborhood after neighborhood, past the elementary school I was attending, and didn’t stop pedaling like a madman until I had reached the soccer field behind the middle school that I would be enrolling in three years later. Soccer practice would be from 6:00 PM until 7:00 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I looked forward to almost every practice, and hardly ever missed one.

My first experience with a soccer coach was rather ominous. As the players gathered on the field for the first day of the first practice, we all sized one another up. We all went to the same elementary school, but none of us were friends with one another. I had just moved into the area at the beginning of the summer, and I didn’t know anyone on the team. As fate would have it, the soccer gods put this band of misfits together, and they ended up being a force that would have to be reckoned with.

The time was 6:02 P.M. and there was no sign of the coach. Two minutes later, a light-blue Ford Aerostar van, with a thin gold stripe across the side, pulled up to the curb next to the field. Out jumped a slightly overweight, bald man who looked to be in his forties. He was pulling a white mesh bag loaded with soccer balls and rubber cones behind him. The man was being followed closely by a tall, thin boy who appeared to be his son.

Hey guys, the man said. Sorry, I’m late. I’m Coach Ellery, and this is my son, Lance. We have a lot of things to do today, so let’s get started.

We all sat in a circle around Mr. Ellery as he stood. We were made up of boys who were of many different sizes and shapes, yet we all had one goal—to be the best soccer players that we could be. Each boy introduced himself to the team. Then we talked a little about strategy, positions, and the game of soccer itself.

The first month of the soccer season went well. I got to know a few of the kids on my team. Four weeks into the season, I had vastly improved. I had evolved into one of the best defensive players on the team. I knew that I had a significant role on the team. I was the member of the defense who played in the middle of the field, in front of our team’s goal. My coach told me that most of the players who were attempting to score would try to score in the center of the goal. My job was to make sure that didn’t happen and to cover for the players on my team on either side of me in case they made mistakes. My coach chose to put me in the center because I was the defender on my team who made the least mistakes by far. During my first game, I played the entire sixty minutes, kicking away every ball that crossed my path. My team won the game 3–0. I had found another sport I liked and was good at.

The next three games followed the same pattern. We won each game in a shutout. Like many young soccer players, I began to think that defense wasn’t nearly as important as offense. I got used to watching the goal-scorers get all the glory and get congratulated during and after every game. My coach rarely said a word to me about how well I played, so I didn’t think playing defense mattered to him much. I longed to be able to play forward so that I could score a goal and get some recognition from him. I started begging Coach Ellery to let me play forward.

Lance had gotten his wish every time he had asked to play a different position. When he wanted to play goalie the first game of the season, he got to play goalie. When he wanted to play forward, he got to play forward. In my very first season of playing soccer, I got my first taste of a coach playing favorites. None of the other kids on my team had ever gotten to play where they wanted to play. After Lance had gotten his first taste of scoring, three games into the season, he started requesting to play every game at forward for the entire game, and his father let him. His first goal had been a fluky goal. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Lance’s father must have thought it was a sign of things to come. That was the first, and last, goal he scored that season, even after playing most of every game at the forward position.

By the sixth game of the season, I had had enough. My team was undefeated. We had won our first five games, but I wasn’t happy. I started the sixth game at my regular center defender position. I decided that I would get Coach Ellery for not allowing me to play forward, by not playing my best. The other team scored less than two minutes into the game. That was the first goal, of many, that our opponent would score that day.

What’s the matter, Barry? Coach Ellery asked. Are you feeling all right?

I wondered if it was evident to Coach Ellery that I wasn’t playing my best on purpose. I knew I was intending on playing poorly, but did the coach know too? I didn’t think so. I spent the next ten minutes lousily manning my position, while also occasionally running over to the sideline while the game was going on, trying to coax Mr. Ellery into letting me play forward.

Can I please play forward? I kept asking.

No, he kept repeating. Now get out there and play as I know you can.

Why can’t I play forward instead of Lance? I asked. He sucks.

As the coach and I were arguing, an opposing player was taking the ball down the center of the field and scoring a sure goal. He went through the same area that I was supposed to be occupying. By now I had cost my team two goals. We were down 2–0 fifteen minutes into the game.

I had also insulted the coach’s son. What could be worse than that? Coach Ellery got the referee’s attention.

Referee, substitute! he yelled. Barry, come out!

I couldn’t believe my ears. Next to Lance, I had played the most minutes of any player on my team. He couldn’t be taking me out. I was the best player on the team, or so I thought. First, I pretended that I didn’t hear Coach Ellery. I just looked the other way and ignored him. The next time he screamed my name, I quickly glanced toward him, but I didn’t move.

Then I heard a familiar voice yell out, Barry, get off the field now!

The voice was that of my father’s. I had forgotten that my parents were at the game watching me. He and Mom had witnessed the lack of respect I had shown my coach. I had disgraced my family in front of their neighbors and friends. I trudged on over to the sideline, where some of my other teammates were sitting. I sat down on the ground and started pouting. I didn’t even notice as our opponent scored four more goals. I didn’t see another minute of playing time the rest of the game. We lost that game 6–0. Mr. Ellery let me know that he thought it was my fault we lost during our team meeting after the game.

We lost this game because of you, Barry, he said in front of the entire squad. Doesn’t everyone agree that Barry is selfish and has a disrespectful attitude?

No one nodded their heads. No one said a word. I wasn’t sure what to think. Was it my fault? Had I let my entire team down? We lost an undefeated season. The coach lost respect for me. I lost respect for the coach. The rest of the team probably thought I was selfish. Whatever friends I had made on the team were probably no longer my friends. My first year of playing soccer was turning into a catastrophe, and I was beginning to hate it. I went to find my parents after our team meeting was over.

Barry, what is wrong with you? my dad asked. That was the most sickening display of bad sportsmanship that I have ever seen in my life. Your mother and I didn’t raise you to behave that way. You owe your coach an apology. Do it now!

I walked over to where Coach Ellery was standing. He was gathering some of the stray soccer balls.

Coach, I said.

What? he asked, rather angrily.

I’m sorry for the way I acted, I said, staring down at the ground.

I couldn’t look him in the eyes. Maybe that was why he didn’t believe my apology was sincere.

I don’t think I can accept your apology, he said. You ruined the game for the rest of the players, the fans, and me because of your selfishness.

I walked away with my head hanging low.

At the following match, I played all of the thirty minutes of the second half of the match, but none at all during the first half. Thirty minutes was the minimum amount of time that a player could play in a game. That was about thirty minutes less than I had been playing in each game before that. At the game, I played twenty-five of the thirty minutes I played as a center defender. I played well, not allowing a goal; but I wasn’t happy. We were winning the game 6–3 with five minutes left, when I suddenly got my wish. I guess that since Coach Ellery thought we were going to win the game since we were ahead by so many goals with so little time left to play that the other team most likely couldn’t catch up, he finally gave in to my demands and let me play forward. I scored my first goal ever within the first two minutes of the very first time I played forward, and I almost scored another goal that game. I’m not sure what Mr. Ellery thought of the quandary he was in as I think about it now. I just know that I didn’t think about it back then because I was too young to think about things like that. I did not like playing defense, even though I was the best defender on the team. I was a smart mouth, had disobeyed Coach Ellery, and had shown him up in front of the team. On the other hand, I had now proven to him that I was one of the best forwards on the team. I’m not sure if Coach Ellery got a clue that I hated playing defense and that there would be no end of me asking him if I could play forward that season, and I’m sure he didn’t want to deal with that. Another decision that Mr. Ellery had to make was whether or not he would give in to the demands of a little kid, and look like a pushover, or if he would force me to play a position I didn’t want to play and risk having me not play well on purpose at games. Little did Mr. Ellery know that I wasn’t going to give him any more problems, no matter what position I played. That was because my parents told me that they would be at every game from then on that season to keep what happened before from ever happening again; but since my parents didn’t tell Coach Ellery about their plans to keep me under control, he probably thought he was at my mercy.

From then on, I became a scoring machine. Mr. Ellery started playing me at center forward every game for the rest of the season. He never gave me recognition for the goals I scored. Since I had crossed him, he was going to hold a grudge against me for the rest of the season. He used positive comments each time another forward scored; but when I scored, he never said anything good. He did say negative things to me, though. He inferred that I was lazy, and that when I scored, I was always in the right place at the right time by accident. He told me that if I were a good player, then I would have scored ten goals every game. He never thought any of the goals I scored were a result of my play. He must have known that the opposite was true, but he never said so. I should have asked him what he had against me and tried to make amends with him, and I asked my parents if they thought I should do so. They told me that I had caused Coach Ellery enough grief and that they doubted he would make amends with me, so I should just give it up. My parents also told me that I deserved what I had gotten, and that I was lucky to be playing at all after the way I had treated Coach Ellery.

My team went from being a dominating defensive team to a dominating offensive team. We weren’t shutting out teams as we had done at the beginning of the season. We now found ourselves playing in high-scoring shootouts every game. Instead of winning 3–0 or 4–0 as we had been, we were now winning by scores of 9–5 and 10–7. We weren’t as solid defensively as we had been earlier in the season, but we put on a good show. We breezed through the end-of-the-season tournament, winning all four games, including the championship. Nothing could stop us. I learned a lot of valuable lessons about sports, especially coaching, that season. I have thought about these experiences thousands of times during my competitive soccer playing and swimming careers, and my soccer and swimming coaching careers. One of the main lessons I learned is that a coach cannot play favorites. I also learned that one player cannot win or lose a soccer game or a swim meet. You win and lose as a team.

My wish to play forward ended at the end of that first season. I guess it took one season to get over the goal-scoring obsession I had. I never had that obsession again. The next season, I moved back to defense, where I played the rest of my playing career. I have no regrets about never playing forward again, because I learned to love playing defense and I knew that even if hardly anyone else knew that my defensive position was one of the most important positions on the field, I did—and that was all that mattered to me. By the time I was fourteen, I had made it into the best team in the highest level of my age group. My club team was consistently one of the top teams in the area.

The Big Time

I was in my first year of high school the following year, but my school didn’t have a soccer team, so I just played on my club team. The school didn’t have a soccer team during my second year of high school either, so I played on my club team once again. I’m not sure why my school didn’t have a team even though the area was a hotbed for soccer and the school had been in existence for twenty years. All the other teams in my high school’s sports league fielded soccer teams, even the schools that had been in existence for a shorter time. Four teams from my town, in my age group, at my level played in the same soccer league I played in. Two of the teams consisted of players from my high school. The other two teams were made up of players from the other high school in my town, which had been around a lot longer than my school, and had had a soccer team for a long time. I knew my school would have a great team if they had a team. That was because of how well each of the two teams made up of players who went to my school, had done playing against other club teams, which were made up of players from other high schools, that were in the same league as my high school. That included the teams made up of players from the other high school in my town.

The very next year, during my junior year, my wish came true. My high school formed a soccer team for the first time. I was ecstatic. I knew that I would make the team since I was one of the best players in my soccer league. Before the season began, I didn’t have many friends. I was looking forward to the day the high school soccer season would begin so that I could make more friends and play my favorite sport.

The first day of soccer tryouts coincided with the first day of school. I did great all throughout tryouts. I was looking forward to tryouts being over and starting the season. Then, my world came crashing down. At the end of the second-to-last day of tryouts, the soccer coach had a meeting with all the players on the team, and one of the things he went over with us was our grades. He told us that he noticed that some of us had not received a 2.0 grade point average or higher during the previous quarter, which was the final quarter of my sophomore year, and the quarter whose grades were used to determine players’ eligibility to play fall sports. The coach also told us that we could not play if we didn’t have at least a C average, no exceptions. He told us that he knew who didn’t have good enough grades to play, and that we should just walk away and not come to the last day of tryouts if we were one of those people. If the coach noticed that any of those players came to the last day of tryouts, he would say their names out loud in front of the whole team. Then everyone on the team would know who was not eligible to play because of their grades. If that happened, those players would become the laughingstocks of the school. Quitting voluntarily and not showing up to practice again would help those of us who didn’t have good-enough grades to play keep from being embarrassed in front of our peers. I was devastated. I went home and cried for about an hour. My dream of being a star player on my high school soccer team had come to a shattering halt.

I had not known that my GPA needed to be above a 2.0 for me to participate in high school sports when I first tried out for a sports team, which was the swim team during my freshman year. I thought the swim practices would be too hard after sloshing my way through the first practice, so I quit after one day. I also tried out for the swim team during my sophomore year, but due to not having any friends on the team, I quit after two weeks.

My best friend, who had attended the same middle school as I did, swam on the same neighborhood swimming team I was on. Two years earlier, his parents had gotten a divorce. His mom, whom he lived with, moved from my town to the next town over after our last year of middle school. The schools in that town were in a different school district, so my friend attended a different high school during the time he was living away. My friend received an inter-district transfer during the summer after his sophomore year, and he came back to my high school for his junior and senior years. I might not have swum on the high school swim team if my friend had not attended my school and kept me going. I often wanted to quit the team, but since I didn’t want to disappoint him, I kept at it. I thought it would have been doubly disappointing to him if I had to tell him I couldn’t swim because of my bad grades, so I did everything I could to make sure I earned good-enough grades to be able to stay on the team. I did that, but just barely. I don’t think my friend knew the truth about the history I had with the swim team during my first two years of high school, or with the soccer team during my junior year shortly after he arrived at the school. I was determined not to tell him. If he was going to find out, it wasn’t going to be from me. He finally found out the truth from someone else. When he did find out that I didn’t swim during my freshman and sophomore years, and that I wasn’t going to play soccer during my junior year, I lied to him by telling him that it was due to a lack of interest. My friend must have thought it was strange when I related this to him because it was coming from a person like me, who was an excellent swimmer and soccer player, who seemed to love participating in both sports. He never asked me anything more about it or my grades even though he probably learned the truth about everything else from other students later on. I thought that if I told him what was causing my grades to be so bad, he wouldn’t understand, and that was why I never mentioned anything to him about my grades.

I didn’t know why I had problems studying at the time. I just knew I had them. I wouldn’t find out until a few years after I graduated from high school that I have Tourette syndrome (TS), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), learning disorders and an anxiety disorder. Even though my Tourette and anxiety symptoms were minor at the time, I suffered horribly, in silence, from OCD and the learning disorder, which made it impossible for me to do well in school. The only people I told about my problems were my mom and my dad. I didn’t even tell them about everything I was going through. I kept a lot of it inside because I was afraid that people would think I was crazy, because I had never heard of a person doing the things I did. How could they understand if I couldn’t? With my friend, as with everyone else, except my family, I pretended to be normal even though I was far from it. I seemed to be a regular guy on the outside, but inside, I was a wreck. Not only did I think my friend might not want to be my friend if he knew I had terrible grades, but I also didn’t think he would want to be my friend if he knew about everything else.

Before I tried out for the soccer team, I hadn’t been on a team long enough to have my eligibility checked and get the results. That happened anywhere from one to three weeks into a season, depending on the season. I just didn’t think that the school took students’ grades into consideration when they were making a decision on whether or not a potential athlete was eligible to be on an athletic team roster. Because of that, the topic of needing a C average to play sports never came up. I just had it in my mind that anyone could play a sport as long as they made the team. I didn’t want to risk being embarrassed in front of the entire soccer team and never hear the end of it, so I voluntarily—or not so voluntarily, depending on how you look at it—quit the team. Since I had earned a 1.83 GPA during the final quarter of my sophomore year, being a star player on my high school soccer team was still just a dream. That high school season of my soccer-playing career was over before it began. At least there was next year, or so I thought.

Some of the soccer players noticed that I was missing from tryouts the next day. They asked me where I had been when they saw me at school the following Monday. For the next few weeks, I made up a different excuse for each player that asked me why I wasn’t there. The reasons I gave ranged from hurting my leg to having an asthma attack. I learned that there had been two other players besides me who also tried out for the soccer team but hadn’t earn good-enough grades to play. The soccer players who I told my ridiculous excuses to were probably on to me in a flash, because none of my excuses made a whole lot of sense. It wasn’t long before I started getting caught up in my lies. I forgot whom I told what lies to and couldn’t keep them straight. Before I knew it, I was telling different lies to the same players I had told other stories to. Whenever one of them confronted me, I denied ever