World Cup 1990 fuelled my growing fascination with soccer and over the course of that summer, it became an obsession. I watched as many games as I could, and taped more, because some were on at odd hours, or when we were out of the house. They were shown on the Turner Broadcast Network, and those little advertising graphics in the corner of the screen hadn't yet been invented - we had to endure actual commercial breaks in the middle of play, during at least one of which the beleaguered US viewing audience actually missed a goal. And the commentary was horrible! "A penalty kick is sort of like a free throw in basketball..."
The 1990 World Cup was supposed to have been the most boring yet, with the lowest ever number of goals scored, but I never noticed. I devoured each game I could get hold of, and ignored my father's growing irritation with the number of blank VHS tapes I was using up - I couldn't bear to erase any of the games even after watching them. "Are you really going to watch these again?" he'd grouse; "Yes," I'd snap back, and the argument would be suspended til the next day when I discovered he'd taped over Ireland-Romania or something.
I remember Tony Meola and his ponytail - he was my favorite player for the US team, and ever since I've always had a thing for goalkeepers. I remember Cameroon and all the talk about how they were controversial and played so much more brutally than the European and South American teams (like animals, you might say?) and how surprising it was when they did well because African teams never do well in the World Cup; the racism of all this escaped me utterly, because I was twelve years old and white and sheltered and I knew nothing of such things. I remember learning about offsides traps and running into space and, well, much more strategy than I'd ever been exposed to in my youth league (none). I remember Diego Maradona, and the "Keys to the Game" that were flashed up on the screen before the final in which Argentina played West Germany: for Argentina, the "Keys" were "Back" "Knee" and "Foot" - the places where Maradona 
was having steroid injections, already battling against his body's betrayal. I felt sick inside when Argentina lost 0-1 on a penalty kick by Brehme in the last minutes. I felt empty when the World Cup went away and there were no more games with which to fill my hours. I consoled myself by using heat transfer paper and special markers to make myself a Maradona t-shirt with a number 10 on the back.
And I made a decision. I wanted to be a soccer player when I grew up, and play in the World Cup.
I had always been told by my parents and teachers that I was bright enough to do whatever I wanted. I discovered that there was a Women's World Cup, but that not very many people watched it, and nobody really cared who won it. That wasn't good enough for me; I decided that I would play in the men's World Cup, instead, and if necessary be the first woman to do so. Nothing is impossible when you're twelve and have always been assured that yes, girls can do whatever they want - even, so goes the cliche, become President of the United States. All I wanted was to star in the World Cup, and that couldn't be too difficult for wonderful empowered young me, right?
I made the mistake of sharing this notion with a few people close to me and after receiving my due share of ridicule and scorn, got what ought to have been a useful bit of advice from a school friend, a boy who also played soccer. If I wanted to be good, he told me, I should try out for the select team.
Soccer people, bear with me; I want to explain this for everyone else: in youth soccer, you start out in the "rec" (recreational) leagues, where teams are most often coached by parent volunteers who only have as much training as they've had time to pick up in between working their jobs and raising their kids and coaching their kids' teams. As much as the kids benefit from the service of said parent volunteers, it's not an environment where you get a lot of great training. If you want to make the next step up and pick up some real skills, you've got to be chosen to play on a "travel" team, also called "select" or "challenge" teams. They're called travel teams because they travel a great deal more than the other teams, to play other elite/travel teams from other areas of the state or region. The coaches may be paid, and certainly have more training. Because the quality of the coaching and competition is better, the kids learn more.
I wanted that - I wanted to be good. So I asked my dad about the select team. There was only one in the area where I lived. It was coached by a man named Ed T., who had informed my dad in no uncertain terms that he "didn't think girls could compete with boys at this level." Maybe my dad agreed with him - I'm not sure. If he did, he never admitted as much to me, but he certainly didn't encourage me to fight back. I did so in the only way I knew how - I worked hard, and those words "didn't think girls could compete with boys at this level" rang in my ears every day as I went through the workout I'd designed for myself. It didn't occur to me to demand the opportunity to try out for the select team; it didn't dawn on me until much later exactly what was being denied me - not just a spot on a particular team, but the opportunity for development and advancement in the sport.
And that, it turned out, was that. Since all the boys went on to play in high school, the rec league didn't have the numbers to continue after we aged out of U-14. Making the high school team was the only way I could keep playing. I was the only girl at tryouts. Ed T. was one of the assistant coaches for the high school team, too. At tryouts, everyone - the prospective players AND the coaches - acted as though I were invisible. The boys wouldn't pass the ball to me in drills. Not once did I touch a ball. When I spoke to the coaches about this, they didn't reply. When we ran the mile, I had an asthma attack but refused to stop; my time was atrocious, but I finished, and ahead of some of the others, at that. Who knows if they bothered to record my time. Me? When they posted the list of players who'd made the cut, I didn't bother to look at it.
That was the end of my love affair with soccer for a very long time. I busied myself with other things. I told myself my strengths lay in other areas, and that it was just as well I gave up that dream for others, since the asthma would have doomed it in the end, even if I'd had the necessary talent. Mostly I just tried not to think about it, and succeeded. There was enough else to do.
I did think about it sometimes, though. If I walked past a park and saw people passing a soccer ball around, if I saw a guy on the school lawn nudging a ball from foot to foot, if I went to one of my brother's games... any time I saw a soccer ball at someone's feet, in someone's hands, in a corner of the gym, I wanted it. I wanted it at my feet. I wanted to touch it, nudge it, place it just so, and then fire it into the goal. I wanted to tap it to my teammate and run like the wind. I wanted to play. Every time I saw a ball. It's eighteen years and more since I first stepped onto a soccer field, and still, when I see the groundskeepers at my workplace set up their cones at lunchtime, bring out the ball, and play - I want to be there in their midst and I want to play, too.
My sophomore year of high school a girl made the soccer team. She had moved from somewhere else, I think. She wasn't allowed to partipate in the team's before-school practices because they only had the one locker room, so she couldn't take a shower. She was good, so I heard the boys grudgingly admit - I never saw her play.
So clearly it could be done; I just wasn't good enough. I wasn't good enough. But I think back and I have to ask, if I had been a boy - a boy who cared about soccer so much he researched and designed his own workout program without adult help, a boy who could leg press twice as much as anyone else in his 8th grade P.E. class, a boy who fought his way from playing 10 minutes at the very end of the season's first game to winning a starting position, a boy who was one of the best on his team at using his "off" foot, a boy who gained a reputation for playing aggressively all game long and never giving up - would such a boy not be considered a strong candidate for the local select team?
girls can't compete with boys at this level
girls can't compete with boys at this level
girls can't compete with boys at this level
So after all those years of convincing myself I really didn't have anything to be angry about, there's no point in being angry about it, it's done, you're fat and out of shape now anyway and couldn't play if you tried, it doesn't matter because you're too busy to play - nothing to see here - nothing to be angry about - that's bullshit. It's bullshit. I have something to be angry about. Reading D's post at DCenters yesterday in which he responded to my first installment of this series made me think of that movie Ladybugs, about the girls' soccer team. My dad loved this movie; I wasn't impressed with it. Apparently I had blocked out most of the plot, because from the IMDB synopsis, it's even worse than I remember it being: the premise is that in order to impress his bosses, a guy dresses up his fiancee's son as a girl and coaches a girls' soccer team. With the son on it.
Anyway, I remembered one scene in particular from this movie that pissed me off. There was a particularly princessy girl on the team who wouldn't exert herself at all for fear of getting her hair mussed or something. She was useless the whole season long. Then in the climactic game of the movie, she gets her nail broken by someone on the opposing team. "They broke my nail!" All of a sudden, she comes to life and plays with skill and grit nobody knew she had (of course). The parents are on the sideline cheering her on, chanting, "Get those nail-breakers! Get those nail-breakers!"
Stupid. Cliched. Patronizing. Utterly fucking annoying. Because sometimes, as a woman, all you can do is just get so pissed off that you refuse to take it anymore. This too-cute movie recognizes the power of that anger, but it also shows the lives of women and girls as being so banal and fluffy that the impetus for the anger can never be anything other than trivial.
Well, guess what. It's not trivial. They took from me something I loved, and I'm angry.
girls can't compete with boys at this level
Fuck you, Ed T. Fuck you.
Oh, and Aaron L., remember how I showed you the results of my summer workouts and you told me you didn't think muscular legs were attractive on girls? Fuck you, too.
For those eagerly awaiting the continuation of the Soccer and Me series, we'll start back up next week. It's a very busy time for me - I'm organizing a canvass for