Sports

As a kid I wasn't much of an athlete. I never lived anyplace where there were leagues with coaches, equipment, fields, referees and so forth, so I never really learned to play any sport well. I was of very average size, on the skinny side, not big enough to play football or tall enough to play basketball. Average coordination. Still, most of my life people have spoken of me, often derisively, as "a jock."

The way that came about, I submit, was a most unusual experience in 6^th Grade. I started 6^th Grade in Lincoln, Nebraska while my father was taking some of the leave he had built up over three years of war. I missed about a month of school travelling back from Germany, but found that I was ahead of the class in most subjects, anyway.

Our teacher, Mrs. Walston, grew upset with the constant complaining by the girls in the class about supposed harassment by the boys at recess. Or at least that was her excuse. It turned out that she had attended a course over the summer on sports for elementary students. I believe that she had been unsuccessful at obtaining permission to implement some of the things she had learned until she started getting complaints from the girls. That gave her the opportunity she needed.

She told us that the problem was that both the boys and girls were just wandering around at recess and ended up arguing just for something to do, which was partially true. The girls were actually jumping rope near the entrance and some of the boys would gravitate there and tease them just for entertainment. Anyway, her prescription was for us to learn two new sports that would forever solve the problem: soccer for nice weather and volleyball for rainy or snowy days. She brought in some movies which showed us the games being played and explained the rules. Then she took us out to the playground, marked off a soccer field, and taught us to play. I will never forget her playing along with us for the first couple of days in her dress and high heels. She was actually pretty good, or purty good as we said in Nebraska, having played in her summer class, I'm sure.

The experiment was a failure. The girls weren't very good at soccer, weren't dressed for it, couldn't run as fast as the boys, and were soon being teased more than ever. They wanted to jump rope. The boys continued to play for the rest of my short stay, but the rules were largely forgotten and combat soccer took over. The differences between that game and football were few. I left before volleyball was introduced into play, so I don't know how well that worked, but I already knew how to play volleyball, having been a substitute on my father's office team at mandatory PT on Wednesday afternoons. My father was 6'3", so my job was to set him up, which I learned how to do. He would calmly stuff the ball down some poor opponent's throat. The point is that I had played that game.

After we left Nebraska I found myself in another poor recess situation. It was much worse on Governors Island because there wasn't even a playground. The girls just sat on the railing talking while the boys made up games that could be played in the street. I introduced soccer. I found a place in the park nearby which was outlined by two nearly-parallel sidewalks and two parallel rows of trees, and even had two pairs of trees in just the right place for goals. I owned a volleyball that was usable for soccer. Soon we were playing soccer every recess. Later I introduced volleyball using the same ball and a net I also happened to own.

I wasn't great at either of these games, but I was experienced. Later, when I went to high school, I was able to stay on the soccer team until most of the seniors got cut to make way for a great bunch of juniors who won the state championship. The best part was still to come.

In Beast Barracks at West Point all the new plebes were assigned to sports "screening" in which we were taught some of the less well known sports, soccer among them, and played them under the supervision of first classmen who watched for signs of talent. The only way West Point could field soccer, lacrosse, gymnastics and similar teams was to find raw talent among the plebes and teach them the sports. By the way, Army was always a national power in all of those sports. I was assigned to soccer screening for my first sport. On the first day I scored 8 goals and passed off another easy 3 or 4 just to hold the score down and give other guys a chance. I wasn’t that good, you understand, everyone else was that bad. The next day the first classman who was running the soccer screening told me that he didn't want me to hold back. I scored 9 goals and had 5 or 6 assists. The next day he handed me a clipboard and told me I was his assistant. It's hard to put that in perspective for anyone who hasn't been through beast barracks. Those who have probably don't believe that this could have happened. Neither did I. I spent the rest of that week as an assistant soccer screener, getting some sorely needed rest from playing, and being given more respect than I would otherwise receive for another 10 months. I am forever grateful to Mrs. Walston for that.

My soccer career at West Point, even after that auspicious beginning, was decidedly uninspiring. My one day of glory was as a plebe when the first string (I was already down to second string) was unable to score any goals against a high school team and was losing 2-0. Massive substitutions were made, I scored 3 goals and we won the game 3-2. Forget the rest, it's not pretty.

After I blew out a knee in my cow (junior) year, I thought that I was pretty much through with soccer. A loophole in the rules allowed former intercollegiate athletes to coach intramural teams in the same sport, and coaches were allowed to play. I did play, a little gingerly on my bad knee, for my company and usually scored between 5 and 8 goals a game. The intramural teams were bad.

Fast forward to 1974. I was in Garmisch, Germany at the Russian Institute. A member of the community, a captain, came up to me at a party one night and told me he had challenged the German mountain division team to a soccer game on German-American Friendship Day. I told him he was nuts. He told me I was the coach. To make a long story short, we lost that game 8-3, which I considered a victory. I scored one of our goals. The next day I couldn't walk I was so stiff. That was the first time that had happened to me. Before, as a kid or young man, I could play sports without such pain the next day. For the first time I realized that I had gotten older.

Upon returning to the United States I began looking for a team to play on. I found one from my neighborhood, joined it and played soccer regularly for the next 20 years. Sometimes I try to calculate how many games I played in. It's hard to be sure, but if I played 40 times a year, which is conservative, for 20 years, that would be 800 games of soccer, not counting all those I played as a kid and a cadet. It's safe to say that I've played over 1000 games of soccer.

How many athletes get to participate in a sport that often? Generally only professional athletes do, except for games such as golf or tennis. I've played a lot of tennis, too, but that's a different story. Golf isn't at all like soccer, in that it certainly isn't aerobic and can be played just as well by fat old men as by lithe young ones. Particularly later in my soccer life I was playing with a lot of very good, very experienced players, often from Europe and Latin America. I was very privileged. I owe it all to Mrs. Walston. I doubt that anyone else from that class ever played soccer again. I may have been the only one who benefited to any extent, and boy! Did I ever benefit?

I learned from soccer that there are sports besides football, basketball and baseball where someone such as I has a better chance of being competitive. I adopted handball as my favorite sport and ended up playing pretty well in a tough environment in the Pentagon Athletic Club. I played until pinched nerves made me quit at age 58. I played soccer until I was 60.

There is something in all males that makes us want to compete physically. If we can't, we compete with each other in other ways, often destructively. That's one thing a lot of people don't understand. They deride "jocks". What they don't understand is that the friends you make in sports are guys you can compete against, often fiercely, but still be friends with. It seems to me that the reason our nature makes us want to compete in sports is to allow exactly that to happen. I was very fortunate to be able to do that for so many years.

I don’t really remember that teacher's name. If she is alive, which is doubtful, I can't find her since I don't even know her name. What a gift she gave to me! What a gift all of my teachers gave to me. Thank you all.