soccer mums

If you've been reading here for awhile, you'll know that our first experience of team soccer last year wasn't great. I suppose I should make that my experience, as I think Olle's experience was alright, though not wonderful.

I wasn't sure whether to join him up again this year and put the issue on the backburner over summer. Then the emails asking us to re-enrol started to arrive (the season starts awfully early). I prevaricated, then at the last minute decided to go ahead, as I thought that if we didn't, he'd be unlikely to play in a soccer team again and he's in the prime of his soccer-playing life, as far as enthusiasm goes. So I re-enrolled him but told the club organiser that we wanted to be in a team with a different coach, even if this meant being apart from his friend who was in the same team last year. (It felt like complete potluck - what if we ended up in a team which we again didn't like?)

To cut a long bureaucratic story (and I could make it a long story) short, we finally ended up in a different team but with the same friend, so that was good. The new team didn't have a coach so there was talk of parents paying for one. Then suddenly came an email telling us that a woman coach - Ann - had been found. Interesting. I took Olle along to the first training session and immediately clocked Ann as a dyke. Very interesting. I chatted to some of the other parents and on the basis of what I can only describe as lesbian osmosis, realised that Ann was attached, in the romantic sense, to May, one of the mothers. Even more interesting.

Of course I told co-parent about this as soon as she got home that night and wondered how to convey to Ann and May that we were also two mothers. It happened that May was compiling the team contact list, so I sent her an email giving co-parent's mobile number and explaining that she'd be bringing Olle to most training sessions. May replied with a request for co-p's email address. I replied saying we lived at the same email address and how much O had enjoyed the training session with the new coach (true!) She replied with a chatty email telling me how impressed the coach had been by O.

Communication is established.

After this week's training session, O apparently told co-parent that "Hal is the coach's favourite because his mother is her girlfriend". Whether Hal was bragging about that or Olle observed this somehow (or precipitated it by telling Hal he has two mums), I'm not sure. It's fascinating if bragging is involved on this subject*.

None of this is, of course, a guarantee that this season will be better than last, but I can't help but feel at this stage that after such an unpleasant experience last year [I didn't describe the half of it here], good karma has rewarded us with not only what appears to be a much nicer team, but a lesbian coach and manager.

Not only that, but Olle made it into the school soccer team, so now he has two training sessions and two games a week!

*I'm not sure how many, if any, of the other parents have realised that a) the coach is a dyke and b) she's connected to May and Hal. I suspect they would guess the first but not necessarily the second. Funnily enough, I think that a) on its own would make some parents nervous but a+b would then make them relax.

Comments

[Laura]

Very nice post title :)

[Teresa Savage]

I coached a girls team for Balmain from about 1998 - 2003. My daughter was in the team, and I am an out lesbian. I never had a single problem with any parents about being a lesbian in that whole time. Most parents are terribly grateful that you are putting energy into their children. In the end though, I gave up coaching children (I now coach women for Balmain)because of the attitude of a small, load minority of parents who have totally unrealistic expectations of their children and of a voluntary coach. I even had parents who would ring me at work on a Monday to challenge some of my coaching decisions from Sunday's games. These parents were not committed to a team experience, but rather in their child as an individual. They also would never, ever, have put in the amount of time I did for years (and still do) into encouraging girls (and women) to play a traditionally male sport. So, if I were you, I would cherish this coach. I would support her both practically (volunteer to bring the oranges, or first aid kit to every game)and support and understand her decisions. The individualistic, neurotic, "user pays" mentality is hugely destructive to community spirit and community sport. We were never playing at Wembley! Hope you have a good season! (Oh, and you might be interested in my blog http://bmowp.blogspot.com/ )