Defender of the Week

So we're playing word games this morning.

Conner had his last soccer game of the season last night. The entire season he scored exactly zero goals. Not one. My heart broke for him because I want my son to feel accomplished and successful. Then, I realized that my son really enjoyed his last game because he found his niche. His forte. His modus operandi. He was the Defender of the Week.

All season long he's been focusing on trying to make a goal because that's the stuff people cheer for. And who can blame him? We all want to be the one with the sexy job. We want to be the receiver making the cool touchdown in the end zone. We want to be the cop who saves the people who are being robbed. We want to be the fireman who rescues the toddler from a burning house. No one cheers for the front line that protected the quarterback so he could make that beautiful pass that was caught in the end-zone. We don't see the dispatcher that took the 911 call that got the cop to that robbery and the fireman to the burning house.

All season my son has been much bigger than the most of the kids on his team (or any of the other teams for that matter.) He's not as fast or as agile as the other kids he's played with. He was the moose to their antelope. This last game, he did a lot of getting in the way. Our coach was the referee for the game (that's how we roll when it's 4-year-olds.) He laughed after the game and said the other team tried several times to push him out of the way with their bodies and just bounced right off. When everybody got tied up in a scrum in the middle of the field, Conner would just wade right into the middle and kick the ball out to one of the superstar strikers who got about 15,000 goals this season. When a member of the other team was going to try to steal the ball from one of our guys, Conner just stood in his path and, of course, the kid just bounced right off. He raced around the field just looking for somebody to frustrate. And he had an absolute blast. He got a couple of yellow cards in the process but who's counting? As one of the parents said, "It's not holding unless the ref calls it." Just call him "Moose McBride."

I guess the lesson here is "play to your strengths." The front line of the offense may not get the cheers but they still get an NFL-sized paycheck. Not bad. Not bad at all.