gooooooooooooooool (oops)

The score was SEVEN to ZERO, and - YES - my son was a winner even though he was goalie on the team with ZERO points.
                                                                                                     Isn't that great?
L. is not the regular goal keeper, but the regular (and very good) goalie wasn't there... along with quite a few other players from the team.  My son's team only had 9 players on the field and the other team had the normal 11.  Plus the other team substituted players whereas the players on "our" side were exhausted because there was nobody to substitute.

The ball was in play in front of my son practically non-stop.  The other goalie might have just gone to sleep and his team still would have won.

So, the first ball went past L. 30 seconds after the game started.  And it didn't take long for 3 more to whiz (or meander) into the net.

At one point, a player from the opposing team ran into him - I can't even remember if L. stopped that goal.  What I do remember is that he went down - and the other player was down.  L. jumped up and ran back to the other player to give him a hand getting up.  I was really proud of him.  He later said that, since it was clear they were going to lose, he just decided quickly to be a good sport about it.

So, at some point during the first half, my son THE GOALIE, started stopping quite a few goal attempts.  By the second half, he looked even more confident.  By the end, he'd really gotten a lot of experience and felt pretty positive about it all.  I'm so grateful.  It's only the second time he has played an entire game.  And he's only played as goalie in three games.  During school soccer season this year (that is, fall 2010) he decided to create a niche for himself by working hard to get the position of back-up goalie.  The first time he ever got a chance to play in that position it was because the regular guy was out; the game went well for him - with help from defense, of course, and the team won!  Go team!

The second time a few weeks later.... dum de dum dum (dragnet music), . .
                                                                                                                he came in when his school team had a solid lead, and after about 15 minutes in the position, enough balls had gotten past him that his team was losing.  Plus, you could see that his confidence had taken a nose dive.  Wow - that was a hard day for him and I was really proud of him because, after taking it really really hard***, he snapped himself out of it by the next morning.  Another mother told me that her son told her that before practice (or a game?) the next day - L made a speech to the team apologizing for his role but MAINLY rallying the team in a positive way. 

So, it is hard to see our kids fail, but fantastic to see that they are able to roll with it and bounce back and maintain the commitment to the team/sport.  In our family, where none of us really has any excess talent in the sports arena, learning to deal with one's own lack of skill... well, that's possibly the most important part of it all.

Finally, and of course I can't resist taking some credit (even if it isn't credit for something I consciously planned to do "right") - I suspect it was an advantage for L. that none of us was pushing him to practice and to be better.  It has to come from him.  My bottom line has always been, "You HAVE to do at least one sport during the school year because exercise is really really really vital for human beings."

GO, MOM!  GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL  oops


       *** I personally wouldn't want to forget that difficult afternoon.  I was watching the game in our town park.  I had walked off during half-time with my friend D who had her dog with her.  We were just coming back from our dog walk when, from a distance, I could see they had put L in as goalie and, seconds later , I saw the first goal go in.  I'm not an expert at all, but it wasn't one of those balls that would have been impossible for anyone to stop.  Sigh...  Anyway, L was very upset after the game - Certainly, there was no way I could walk home with him or even talk to him at the field.  At home, there were,  at first, some theatrical gestures and L closed up in his room (literally and figuratively).  I don't remember all the details, so I won't go on and on - but - at a certain point - I suggested watching a comedy  on tv (netflix).  He agreed, and was willing to snuggle with me there on the couch (no longer typical of him by that point in his life).  
       Then, as the evening wore on, he was kind of internally making up his mind about things.  He said something a bit cryptic to me with a big hug (also NOT typical of him at this point in his life).  It was along these lines: he hadn't always been honest with me, but he was going to change (I did not pursue this too much, because this was a fragile moment - but we more or less established that he was talking about school and informing me about school stuff)...  Why would that make me feel good as a mother, proud of him?  It's funny - it does make me proud even though, in all honesty, nothing changed afterward in terms of his "secrets."  I think the best explanation for my attitude is that  I saw him decide to respond to the day not by lashing out at how others treated him or saw him, not by feeling sorry for himself, but by saying to himself, "What kind of person do I want to be?" 
       That's the sort of lesson we should take from our failures.   
       Oh, and I feel ternura toward him when I suspect that what was going on was that he realized at that moment that I was --his parents were-- a source of strength and comfort for him and that he could rely on us.  I'm perfectly happy to take that from him without demanding that he decide, as a consequence, to really change boundaries that he was beginning to build between me and him.  That actually would have probably worried me.