HOWEVER OLD THEY GET, THEY’RE STILL YOUR KIDS…

I have watched the teenager slowly make his way back from knee surgery over the last 10 months. As easy as it hasn’t been for him, it’s also not been easy for me. Watching the quiet diligence, watching the battle to maintain some semblance of fitness, watching the quiet, determined and stoic plod through physical therapy and months spent unable to play his favorite sport, the sport where he injured the knee in the first place. Just watching. Doing nothing but offering support and help and whatever else can be done to help him.

That has always been highlighted whenever the High School soccer team has featured, and particularly his ‘relationship’ with the head coach. As a caveat to all I’m about to say, I coached him for 6 years so I know how he can be, and equally, I’ve backed subsequent coaches and taught him to stay quiet on the occasions he disagrees, put his own head down and work harder to prove them wrong.

A bit of history. His High School coach (or ‘The Coach’ as I will from now) spent the first two years of the teenager’s High School seasons cajoling him with a combination of positive and negative reinforcements. He’d jaw at him. He’d shout at him. He’d give him instructions as to what he needed to be doing (for what it’s worth, the man does not know the game beyond some very basic fundamentals) and when they played practice matches, he’d go into the teenager like a steam train. incidentally, when asked why by the teenager’s mother, the answer was that it was to ‘teach him how to use his body.’ I remember wondering how crudely putting in potential ankle-breaking challenges was teaching anyone anything constructive -  remember, this is a game I play and coached for 7 years.

One coach I remember sent the teenager home from a club practice a few years ago, telling him that if he was only going to half-run the athletic drills, then not to bother coming. He told him that he needed to spend the next few practices just doing various running drills, and if he didn’t want to do it then not to bother showing up. I told him that if he wanted to grow, wanted to mature, wanted to prove himself, that he needed to do everything which was being asked of him. In silence and with respect. I told him to learn that this coach was doing him a favor. And I told him to take onboard from every coach a positive, because every coach has at least one.

One thing The Coach was trying to do, was encourage the teenager to be a leader. He made him a captain. He gave him responsibilities. He gave him a lot of playing time. He’d make some absurd tactical decisions, ones that had many scratching their heads, but his heart was in the right place.

As last season started, the teenager was in the best shape of his life having shed 35  lbs the hard way, and was looking forward to the school season. In the first few games he played 11 different positions, often switching positions four times in a match. He was captain. And then, suddenly, it stopped. Game-time became shorter and shorter, he was no longer captain. And most critically, there was absolutely no communication as to why beyond one muttered explanation that in a 10 minute spell as forward, he didn’t score and thus didn’t do enough to justify his place. The Coach would throw him on for 10 minute as a sub and then sub him off again. When the teenager asked him for some feedback, he was told that either he ‘hadn’t done enough to warrant his place’ or not to question his Coach.

I became concerned that between the teenagers clubs side and training and school training, he was over-training. I asked him to ask his coach if he could miss a school practice every week, as I knew that three or 4 matches a week plus daily training would wreck him. And then he tore his ACL and chipped bone off the very very tip of his femur whilst playing for his club side.

Two weeks ago, he played his first competitive match since the injury. He started upfront and asked if he could drop to centre-midfield. Agreement was quick, and subsequently the team won 4-0. Despite the bullshit of last season, the lack of communication, the lack of proper tactical nous and the lack of any basic empathy, it was looking OK. And then yesterday, the same bullshit. The same ’switch all over the pitch.’ The same lack of communication. The same ‘here’s 20 minutes on the pitch and then you’re subbed.’ The same ‘tough-love’ garbage. And the glaring fact that The Coach has forgotten that the teenager is 17 years old. Not 10, not 11. The teenager had asked The Coach if he would be going back into the game. The Coach had said yes. 40 minutes later, the teenager had asked The Coach when he’d be going back into the game. The Coach said ‘you won’t now’ that he had been ‘working’ on a way to get him back into the match (not rocket science per se) but that because he’d asked, now he wouldn’t go back in. Full stop. He told the teenager never to ask that question again.And when the teenager asked if there was any feedback on his performance, The Coach said no, not really and that he thought he’d played well. I ask you, what sort of moronic pre-school autocracy is it when a player cannot ask a coach if he’s going back into the game or when he’s going back in? I never minded being asked by players I worked with, it showed me they were enthusiastic, and for the lads that were a bit more persistent, well, I talked with them a little bit more, gave them a little more feedback and guidance.

I am not a fool. I do not expect my son to be given special treatment, and I know what a prick he can be (show me a teenager who is never a prick and I’ll show you someone who’s lying about their age!) but what I DO expect from any coach, even The Coach, is communication and decent people manager. That this idiot has not got the first clue about the game I love, and have loved, for nearly 40 years is beside the point. That he engages in this weirdly perverse, almost passive-aggressive behavior with the teenager is wholly annoying. If he was anybody else I’d already have said my piece, but I can’t do that right now, because this

isn’t

my

fight.

But the frustration of recognizing that is so immensely stressful that last night I literally found myself shutting down in a combination of repressed anger, frustration and undeniable fatigue. I was furious with what I saw last night. I remain furious with the double-standards employed by The Coach (there’s more but we don’t have the time do we!). And it reminded me unequivocally that for all the objectivity I show, for all the times I’ve told the teenager to stop blaming others and take care of the portion of a situation HE can control first, here was a situation where the adult was behaving like a petulant child  and the teenager, my teenager, was being wronged once again.

And there I was, watching, fuming, helpless. Just like when he hurt his knee and the antagonist who had helped cause the injury looked at him on the floor, laughed, said ‘get up’ and told the referee he should book him. Helpless.

This is how it will be. This is how life is. You watch your kids get bumped and bruised throughout their lives, even when they’re you’re height and sporting more facial hair than you. And you have to learn to be quiet and take it. To discuss it with them but not to address it publicly.

It might be the hardest work we ever do as parents…