Goooooo Hurricanes!
I’m almost done capturing my family’s old Beta tapes in digital format. Tonight I came across one of the last of the Beta era, a fifteen-minute tape from 1991 of my brother playing soccer. He was four.
Four-year-old soccer, I have to say, is pretty great. They play six on a side, no goalies, on a quarter-size field with something like a size two ball. The games are short, probably twenty or thirty minutes, with two halves. Having to aim for the opposite goal in the second half seemed to be just at the limit of four-year-old comprehension, so I imagine the only reason to even have halves is so there’s time for the Hi-C-and-orange-wedge break.
My brother’s team, the Hurricanes, had matching uniforms, even for the coaches. Yes, coaches plural. I think while one is giving instruction and encouragement, the other is on standby to herd any stray athletes back into the pack.
There’s not much strategy in four-year-old soccer. There’s plenty of running, a good deal of pushing, and occasionally something that could be called “kicking.” Every ten seconds or so somebody falls down. Passing is unheard of.
This doesn’t stop the parents from cheering wildly and continuously. On the tape I can hear my mom yelling, “Nicholas! Get it, Nicholas! Get it! Good job, Jason! Jason! Go Brad! Get it!” The whole time, seriously. And she wasn’t the only one (just the one standing closest to the cameraman). There was also a three-by-five-foot banner, handmade by one of the moms and threaded onto a PVC pipe frame, which I’m sure gave those kids the strength to go on despite being down 9-0. Hey now, before you rip on the team, you should know that only two of those goals were scored by the Hurricanes themselves.
My brother did go on to play soccer all the way through high school, and he got pretty good at it. Eventually.
