The aim of sport, as far as I could tell growing up, is to get rid of any ball passed to you as quickly as possible, to minimise the chance of making a mistake and more shouting. It was only when I was roped into playing rugby (badly) for Hannah's business school that I found in normal sport your teammates want you to do well, and the team to do well as a result, rather than hoping you'll fail and therefore attract the psychotic teacher's attention away from them.
Organised sport in the USA is a big thing from the minute kids can walk, mainly because no one can afford university without a scholarship. Pete's school offers Soccer Shots and so - against my better, traumatised judgement - I signed him up. He's been playing happily all year, and today was their graduation.
All parents were invited along, but I was in two minds. Would I have to watch my son being humiliated the way his father was? No - 50% of his genes are from his mother, so I knew he'd do better than me. Would I suffer an embarrassing flashback, wetting myself as an easy excuse to go for an early shower? Would it go the other way, and I'd find myself screaming from the sidelines, hurling obscenities at the referee, like any number of over-compensating parents, while a class of four-yr-olds looked on?
Luckily not too much of that came to pass, mainly because sports coaching in the USA is so damned positive! High-fives are de rigueur, between coaches and students, student-to-student, and even from one team to the opposition when they score. Fun, imaginative games were played, with the coach being an alien who had to be hit with footballs to make him fly away. Who then high-fives his vanquishers! And when it came to an actual match, so many people were cheering each other that it completely drowned out my deeply inappropriate English football chants.
Pete loved it, as did all his classmates, as did all the parents. Has sports coaching come so far since the 1980s? Was mine the last generation whose PE staff was made up of fugitive Nazi war criminals? Or is everyone in America just a lot more nice than us Europeans, genuinely celebrating successes and supporting each other along the way?
I think that they're just nicer here. Which is probably why they're so rubbish at football.
These days I couldn't manage even this much of a stretch without putting my back out.
"And...control!" said the coach, and they all did this. What 4-yr-old doesn't want to be in control?
Stop laughing! This isn't meant to be fun!
Ggggooooaaaaaalllll!!!
Team photo.
It all finished with a cheer, and all children left with visibly higher self-esteem and no psychological damage. So what's the point, really?
Star player.
