My pregame meal was some sort of turkey and cranberry relish sandwich at McMenamins. The food was mediocre, and I was amped to get going, which didn’t make me particularly good dinner company. Eric, my brother-in-law, was down from Seattle for my first game. My wife, Lisa, was also going to watch.
After a flurry of activity within a short time span, the Fish Tacos were finally ready to hit the field for their first game on November 19, 2011 at 9:00 p.m. As the de facto manager of the team, I told some of my excited but inexperienced teammates that we wouldn’t be getting any tee shirts or trophies for winning the league title. That was met with some disappointment as was the fact that we wouldn’t have our names announced as we stepped on the field to a cheering crowd. It’s Saturday night, coed soccer, guys! We’re lucky they keep score!
I also mentioned to some team members that we could move from lower to upper division the following season should we feel we weren’t being challenged. I had no idea how ridiculous this would sound later. Recreational soccer, as we were to learn, is not recreational. Many players have the misguided belief they should have been professional athletes.
I like to get to games about 20 to 30 minutes early. Eric, Lisa and I all hopped into the car and picked up my teammate Garrett on the way to the Oregon Soccer Center. Garrett and I had spent a few hours at the facility practicing skills, holding foot races, and generally impressing each other with our athletic prowess. We were the first to arrive at the field on opening night while another game was still in progress. Seeing teams in action, moving at game speed, led to another, “Man, what are we doing…?” exchange with Garrett. I was definitely nervous.
Most of the Fish Tacos arrived early so we could discuss strategy and take a team photo. While we were getting ourselves organized for the picture, a couple of players from the team we were facing laughed as they walked by and said we should take the photo while we were still smiling. I thought that was rather gauche for lower division coed recreational soccer and looked forward to beating them.
Indoor soccer and its outdoor counterpart differ in more ways than the field. The speed of the game is faster indoors, and the game length is shorter. There are two halves. Each half lasts 22 minutes. Halftime is a two-minute break, and pregame warm-ups are also short because of the number of matches a facility schedules each night. In order to encourage women to participate and not just stand out of the way while the men go at it, women’s goals count for two points and men’s count for one. It’s a stupid rule because the women are generally better players than the men, but it’s the rule with which we’re stuck in coed indoor.
We were playing a team named the Onion Bag Bulgers. A bulge in the ol’ onion bag is a soccer idiom for putting a ball in the net, or scoring a goal. That should have been a red flag. It didn’t take long for them to overpower and run us out of the building.
The speed of the game and the expertise of the team we were playing against led to things getting out of hand early. That strategy session we had before the match? It exploded almost immediately. The Onion Bag Bulgers looked like they had played together for years. They actually ran plays while we simply ran out of gas. We worried that one of our guys was going to have a heart attack after he ran up and down the field a couple times and had to come off. We were rattled, disorganized, and out of shape. We couldn’t breathe, we couldn’t score, and we certainly couldn’t defend well. The women’s goals were killing us, too.
I spent the first half as goalkeeper. While I made a lot of saves, a lot of balls got past me. Garrett was a big help as our sweeper and gave me some confidence, but there were a number of times when it was just the two of us in the back trying to prevent a goal against a sea of black shirts while the rest of our team was caught up field. The Onion Bag Bulgers ran through us like Sherman’s army ran through Atlanta. The second half wasn’t much better. Arnulfo, our other goalkeeper, had been a league champion during his younger days in Mexico. Even he couldn’t stop the onslaught. We were able to prevent a shutout but lost the game 13-4.
Our team displayed a few good moments. We did score after all! Eric thought I’d done well for someone who had never played before. He said it looked as though I knew what I was doing, which was an appreciated compliment. I was optimistic that the Fish Tacos would be in most of the games we played.
Was the match fun? Actually, yes. Did I wonder how in the world this was considered lower division recreational soccer? Yes, and I’d ponder that a lot over the coming months. Did I want to play again? Absolutely, and our next game was against a team named Gramma Flappy Arms. That sounded like a group of older players we’d do well against. Things were looking up already!
Since most of us worked together, we had a lot to talk about at the office on Monday. Unfortunately, we had more to discuss than I thought. Some lessons were to come early.
More to come in Part IV…