Thing One is playing in a soccer tournament this weekend. Suburban Connecticut is of course a hot bed of Soccer Parents. Sadly, we are becoming Soccer Parents. I coach Thing Two in a Rec league, while Thing One plays in a travel squad.
He's just good enough to inspire hope. Hope that despite his apparent disinterest in school, he can maybe boost his chances of getting an education by interesting a coach somewhere.
But we are also High School Coaches, in addition to being Soccer Parents. So we know that only a very, very few kids every really make that jump. He has dreams of being Lionel Messi, we have dreams of him playing D-III. But we also realize how unlikely those dreams are to come true. At the very least, we hope it helps him get into the school we work at, because we shudder to think what we would do if we had to rely on the local, underfunded public school.
I bring this up, because I finally understand how easy it is to fall into the trap of expecting great things from kids who are maybe just above average. There's nothing wrong with being above average, in fact above average can be defined as being good.
But I get it. And getting it has made me a better teacher, for one thing. It helps me understand the difference between the kids expectations and the parents expectations.
And that is why we will be pushing him into the Crew program.
I smell Olympics!
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