by Steve Moore
I was pretty sure other students in the cafeteria were gossiping about me and how I hate the most popular sport in the universe.
Or maybe not.
Did someone spill the beans? There were three prime suspects: Becky, Joey, or Carlos.
Becky wasn’t even sitting at the C Central table anymore because of my “I hate soccer” blunder. But she is too nice to spread gossip.
And Joey speaks too quietly for anyone to hear him, even if he did gossip.
That left Carlos.
But it wasn’t Carlos. In fact, no one had spilled the beans.
Yet.
Jimmy Jimerino is Spiro’s BJOC—Big Jock on Campus. He and his kiss-up posse of clingy friends stopped at the C Central table. Jimmy pointed at me.
Oh, derp. Now the beans were spilled.
Jimmy’s kiss-up posse laughed like hyenas. Everyone in the cafeteria stopped scarfing their food. They turned and stared at me.
Now I really had no choice. If there was any hope of saving my friendship with Becky and patching up my reputation at school, then I had to follow my grandpa’s advice:
“Don’t knock it until you try it.”
After the final period of classes, I walked into the athletic office to sign up for the varsity soccer team tryouts.
CHAPTER 6
I was too late.
The deadline for signing up had already passed. Tryouts were over and Coach Earwax had posted the final team roster on the wall outside his office.
Those who’d made the cut were the usual hotshot athletes. Jimmy Jimerino, of course, was at the top of the list. He and his posse of clingy friends.
Guys like Skinny Dennis and Vinny Pascual and Dewey Taylor. They laugh their jocks off at every lame joke that Jimmy tells—even if they’ve heard him tell the same joke a million times.
Becky O’Callahan’s name also was on the list of players who made the team. Becky is a hotshot athlete, but without all the attitude.
I walked into Coach Earwax’s office to ask if I could play on the soccer team, even though tryouts were over. He was a little, er, preoccupied.
Coach Earwax has a semi-secret habit. He digs wax out of his ears with car keys. Then he rolls the wax up into a ball and sticks it under his chair like chewed bubble gum. His head is practically a wax factory.
I had to do one of those fake COUGH things that alert a person with a semi-secret habit that someone else is in the room.
Coach quickly ditched a huge wad of earwax under his chair.
I asked him if I could join the varsity team even if it meant that I had to sit on the bench and never play unless the score was a hundred to zip. (Which would never in a billion years happen in the game of soccer.)
I was perfectly fine with sitting on the pine. Like I said, I’m good at it. And I enjoy watching all the stuff that goes on around the game, like Coach digging wax out of his ears with car keys.
Coach Earwax turned me down, though. He said it wouldn’t be fair to players who actually tried out for the team, especially the ones who got cut and had to live with the humiliation for a week or two until they got over it.
But Coach Earwax suggested an alternative if I really was serious about playing soccer.
CHAPTER 7
I stood outside the office of the JV soccer coach for a long time. My mind bounced back and forth: Do I play soccer, or do I not play soccer?
Do I play a sport I hate, er . . . dislike a lot . . . and reveal my Foot-Eye Dweeb-Itis to the entire world? Or do I not play soccer and lose a good friend with Nature’s Near-Perfect Smile.
I walked into the coach’s office. Ms. Katinsky was standing at the window and gazing out at the parking lot. She was reciting dialogue from what I think is a famous play. Or maybe a novel. Animated movie? I’m not sure.
Anyway, it was something about a dumb cat that foolishly climbed onto a roof in the middle of summer.
Ms. Katinsky coaches the JV soccer team and a couple of other sports, but her main job at Spiro is teaching theater.
You probably already know this, but teachers don’t exactly rake in the cash. So coaching is a side job that Ms. Katinsky works to earn a few extra bucks for stuff like food and shelter.
She goes by “Ms. Katinsky” in theater class, but in sports the players call her “Coach K” because it’s a strict rule in every sport that a coach has a nickname.
I didn’t need to do one of those fake COUGH things to alert Coach K that I was in the room. Catching someone who is alone and reciting dialogue about a foolish cat isn’t as awkward as walking in on a coach who digs wax out of his ears with car keys.
I got down to business and sort of begged Coach K. to let me play on the JV soccer team.
I told her that I totally forgot about tryouts for the varsity team, which was a minor fib.
Then I explained how my body needs physical activity in order for my brain to comprehend mathematics, which was a bigger fib that I made up on the spot.
And then I told her that I love the game of soccer more than any sport in the universe, which was a gigantic whopper.
I was just about to tell Coach K that I’d be willing to sit on the bench, even if the score was an unlikely blowout of a hundred to zip, but she interrupted my pathetic groveling.
CHAPTER 8
Before I went to my first practice as a member of the Spiro T. Agnew junior varsity team, I needed to buy some soccer gear.
I have lots of football, basketball, and baseball gear. I even have golf clubs and a hockey stick and running shoes. But I didn’t have a single piece of soccer stuff.
In my family, the Power Structure controls pretty much everything, but Dad is the go-to person whenever I need money to buy any kind of sports gear.
Dad was a hotshot athlete who blew out both of his knees playing sports in college. He missed out on raking in billions in cash playing professional sports. And I’m not even exaggerating.
He shook off the disappointment, though, and now he’s a hotshot salesman for a company that makes medical gizmos that repair blown-out knees.
I told Dad that I was going to play soccer for my school.
Next stop, O’Callahan’s Sporting Goods.
When I got there, Joey and Carlos were waiting for me. They knew what I was up to.
This happens a lot. Why? Because Joey is psychic. And I’m not even making that up.
One time, Joey predicted that the Mighty Plumbers mascot would kick Carlos right in the shin, one of the most sensitive bones in the entire body. And two minutes later, it happened!
Joey got a psychic message earlier in the day and told Carlos that I was going to play soccer for the JV team and that I had hit up my dad for a chunk of his hard-earned wages to buy gear.
Like I said, Joey and Carlos love soccer. But they both had missed tryouts for the varsity team due to extenuating circumstances.
Joey is the middle child in a big family, so he not only gets lost in the chaos, but he also gets stuck doing unpleasant chores. And that’s what happened on the day of soccer tryouts.
Meanwhile, Carlos missed the tryouts because he assumed that Coach Earwax already knew he was a hotshot soccer player who automatically would be notified of the date and time of varsity tryouts.
That didn’t happen, for obvious reasons.
So Joey and Carlos decided to play for the JV team, especially when Joey predicted that I was going to be on the team, too. They went to O’Callahan’s Sporting Goods to get some gear of their own.
Joey needed shin guards because he couldn’t use hand-me-downs. His older siblings had already gone through their “growth spurt,” so their shin guards didn’t fit Joey. Not even close.
Carlos wasn’t there to buy soccer gear, though. He wanted a hacky sack. Why? I don’t know. You’d have to ask Carlos.
We walked into O’Callahan’s Sporting Goods and Becky was working at the checkout counter. Her grandfather owns the store, so Becky pretty much has a job for life unless she decides to become a b
rain surgeon or a ventriloquist.
I was about to approach Becky and tell her that I had decided to play soccer for the Spiro JV team so that she wouldn’t think I was a heartless soccer hater.
Unfortunately, hotshot athlete Jimmy Jimerino was hanging out at the counter. (Becky used to be Jimmy’s girlfriend until she decided that the relationship didn’t exactly fry her burger.)
Jimmy apparently was groveling to win her back. He was leaning on the counter, acting all cool in a game-worn NFL jersey that may or may not have been signed by the actual Hall of Fame quarterback who wore it.
(I have a hobby of collecting and selling sports memorabilia. I’d sold that game-worn NFL jersey to Jimmy a few months earlier for about four times what it was actually worth.)
I wasn’t in the mood to apologize to Becky right in front of Jimmy, so I snuck past them and went to pick out my soccer gear.
It took Joey about five seconds to grab his tiny shin guards and get to the checkout counter.
Carlos took way longer to find the perfect hacky sack.
In case you don’t know, hacky sack is a game played with a tennis ball–size bag filled with sand or beads.
Players stand in a circle and kick the bag around with their feet until they quit out of boredom and wander off to find a game that’s more fun to play.
After squeezing about a thousand different hacky sacks, Carlos finally chose a bag with just the right amount of sand or beads.
Then he borrowed some of my dad’s hard-earned wages to make the purchase because he forgot to bring his wallet, which happens a lot.
Why did I lend Carlos money to buy a hacky sack? I don’t know. You’d have to ask . . . er . . . me.
Anyway, I didn’t know much about soccer gear, so I winged it and grabbed stuff that I thought might be useful.
I picked out a pair of shorts and a jersey and socks and shin guards. Then I chose a pair of cleats from a wall display of shoes for every game in the universe except hacky sack.
The shoes I picked looked like maybe they would help my feet communicate with my eyes.
I set my gear up on the checkout counter. Becky acted friendly, but it was awkward. It was more like the “friendly” she showed every other O’Callahan’s customer.
Our friendship, if we still had one, was not the same as it was before I trash-talked the most popular game in the universe. So I told Becky that I was going to play soccer for Spiro, hoping that would smooth things over.
Jimmy Jimerino, of course, had to point out that the Spiro varsity roster already was set in stone.
I kept my mouth shut.
Becky rang up the shorts and jersey and socks and shin guards, but not the shoes. She handed them back to me.
Derp!
Jimmy snickered while I swapped the rugby shoes for actual soccer shoes. Then I handed over the last of my dad’s hard-earned wages and left O’Callahan’s Sporting Goods without saying another word to Becky or Jimmy.
The mission to save my friendship with Becky—and my reputation at school—had begun.
CHAPTER 9
The next step was a big one: the first day of soccer practice, where I would try to overcome my Foot-Eye Dweeb-Itis.
Coach K started practice like every other coach in the entire world. Sort of.
Because she teaches theater, Coach K did it in a dramatic way. Instead of blowing a wimpy whistle, she carried a tuba onto the soccer field and blasted a deep note that sounded like a water buffalo with stomach gas.
The tuba blast startled one of the players so badly, he ran off the field and never came back.
We started practice with conditioning drills that didn’t require that my feet communicate properly with my eyes.
It was all push-ups, sit-ups, and laps around the field. Everyone cruised through it without any problem. Except cranky Carlos.
Then Coach K brought out the soccer balls for a fundamentals drill. She had each of us pair off with another teammate and stand ten feet apart.
I ended up with Liz Casey, a popular girl who is the student body president. Liz has a habit of speaking in sentences that all end in question marks.
No periods. No exclamation marks. Only question marks.
I’m pretty sure that’s why Liz was doing so well in school politics because she never actually made a campaign promise that ended with a period.
After everyone paired off for the fundamentals drill, Coach K told us to kick the soccer ball back and forth.
There was no question that Liz’s feet knew how to communicate with her eyes.
She did that thing where the ball is on the ground and you spin it up onto the toe of your shoe, fling it up in the air, and then kick the ball to another player.
Liz spun it, flung it, and kicked the ball over to me. I was supposed to stop the ball with my foot, control it, then kick it back to Liz.
It didn’t go well.
Liz tried to be nice and took the blame.
“Sorry? That was totally my fault?”
I kicked the ball back to Liz, but it veered off. Every time she kicked it to me, I couldn’t stop and control the ball. And every time I kicked the ball back to Liz, it would sail off in a wrong direction.
Meanwhile, my hands were weak and useless.
They played no role in the soccer drill. They just sort of dangled by my side while my feet and eyes suffered a total communication breakdown.
At one point, Coach K stopped by to see how Liz and I were doing. After observing a few of my botched kicks, she taught me a fundamental that most soccer players learn when they are about two years old.
I have always kicked with the toe of my foot. I had never kicked anything with the side of my foot. Not a football or a beach ball or a pile of leaves—nothing!
I gave it a try, but by then the wiring between my feet and eyes was completely bumfuzzled.
The soccer drill went on for way too long, in my opinion.
Coach K finally blasted her tuba. It was time for a scrimmage.
Because one of the players had been frightened earlier by the tuba blast and ran off never to be seen again, we only had twelve players, so Coach K divided us into two practice squads with six players each.
In regulation soccer, each team has eleven players on the field and at least three or four substitutes on the bench.
So why did we have so few players?
Jessica Whitehead, the school genius, told me that some of Spiro’s best soccer players chose to play for elite club teams that aren’t associated with a school.
The clubs cost parents a huge chunk of their hard-earned wages, but apparently they give hotshot soccer players a better chance for a college scholarship and a career in the pros, where they will rake in billions in cash.
Spiro didn’t have enough players for separate boys and girls soccer teams. So we had varsity and JV teams that were coed.
I was on one scrimmage team with Joey and four others, including Liz Casey, who apparently had taken a liking to Joey.
Carlos was on the other team with Jessica Whitehead. Carlos and Jessica once were sort of “a thing.” But that only lasted about a week.
Stephanie Jennison also was on Carlos’s squad. She was by far the best player on the Spiro JV soccer team.
Stephanie missed varsity tryouts because her family had just moved to town.
She was good enough to have deserted Spiro to play for an elite soccer club, but Stephanie wanted to be true to her new school. (Or maybe her parents didn’t want to fork over a huge chunk of their hard-earned wages to pay for an elite club.)
Carlos was chosen to kick off from midfield to start the scrimmage.
Carlos had told Coach K that he was a hotshot player who should play center midfielder—pretty much the most important offensive position in the game of soccer.
Carlos, of course, had told Coach K a gigantic whopper.
Instead of doing the smart thing and tapping the ball to a teammate, self-proclaimed hotshot Carlos started the scrimma
ge by kicking the soccer ball as hard as he could downfield.
It was an impressive kick, but it curved out of bounds and into the faculty parking lot, where it ricocheted among the economy cars and set off about a dozen alarms.
We began the scrimmage.
Carlos lumbered around the field, grumbling about multiple “fouls,” and he pretty much proved to Coach K that he was not even close to being a decent center midfielder.
Joey was awesome. He was so quick, the other players couldn’t even see him steal the ball right from under their legs.
Coach K wrote a top-secret note in her clipboard about Joey’s quick-as-a-flea abilities.
Eleven of the twelve players in the scrimmage kicked the ball up and down the field. Meanwhile, the twelfth player—that would be me—avoided the ball.
I didn’t want to put my Foot-Eye Dweeb-Itis on display.
Coach K finally stopped the scrimmage and, right in front of the other players, asked me if I was afraid of the soccer ball.
Ouch!
That brought back bad memories of my first season on the Spiro T. Agnew baseball team when I had Bean-O-Phobia, a morbid fear of getting hit by a pitch.
But I defeated that phobia long ago.
I wasn’t afraid of the soccer ball. I was afraid of what my clueless feet would do with the soccer ball. So I tried to bluff.
To show that I wasn’t afraid, I foolishly went after the ball whenever it came anywhere near me. Here is a short summary of how that worked out:
Coach K ended practice and called us into a tight huddle. It was a little too tight for Joey.
Coach handed out the schedule for the soccer season. We had to practice every day after school for a week before we started preseason games.
And the first JV and varsity preseason games on our schedule were every player’s dream: A bus trip. To an out-of-town soccer tournament. For an entire weekend!
