A Sensitive Dad’s Dread: Passing On the Wimp Gene

I have never thought of myself as the type of father who looks to his son to achieve what he might have were it not for some often-rehashed circumstance.

There are few sights more pathetic than a father, tendons straining visibly in his neck, screaming at his son from the sidelines of an athletic field.

But that’s not me. I’m a sensitive dad of the 1990s. I was reminded of this recently when I took my son to his first soccer practice.

There we are, me off work early and my oldest son, Sam, carrying a spotless soccer ball and wearing his brand new cleats and shinguards wandering around Victory Park looking for the coach.

By the time we make our way around two or three fields of scrambling kids, and whistle-blowing adults, our coach has already started talking to the other 5-year-olds and their parents seated on the grass in front of him.

Sam drops the soccer ball and sits down on it, elbows resting casually on his widely spaced knees. Very cool. So far, so good.

After a few more minutes of talking about parents having to make a team banner, provide refreshments, use lots of positive reinforcement and show up at every game, Coach has all the kids count off into two groups.

All the “ones” are lined up facing all the “twos,” with a ball in between. Coach tells the ones to kick the ball forward and the twos to kick it forward in the opposite direction. Ready, go. Expected mayhem. Ball goes off in a sideways direction followed by a mass of kids. But not Sam.

Where’s Sam? Roughly where he started, hands covering his face, shoulders twitching, trying desperately not to cry. But crying anyway.

And I’m supposed to use positive reinforcement. I call him over and suggest he wait until he gets hold of himself before he tries to talk.

“I didn’t get a turn to kick the ball. They’re not taking turns.”

He has a point. If I had a dime for every time I’ve told him and his brothers to take turns . . . .

I am very conscious of the other dads trying not to look at us.

Coach lines the kids up again, this time with Sam in the middle of a front line, and blows his whistle. Sam kicks the ball once, halfheartedly, and then stands there as the pack moves off across the field again.

Why do I force it? Because, despite my enlightened approach to parenting, there is a part of me that would rather my son were a starting quarterback than a valedictorian. I want him to “get” whatever there is to get out of team sports.

I never did. I never knew where to stand in the expanse of an athletic field. What was I supposed to do with my hands? I did spend two, or really more like one and a half, years on the rowing crew in college--which counts as a team sport, but since my feet were strapped in and I had to hold onto the oar, there was never any question of where to stand or what to do with my hands.

After years of self-conscious reflection, I have concluded that my lack of understanding of sports is based not on some un-American wimp factor that lifting weights could correct, but on a missing gene. And this is one genetic flaw that I am not going to pass along to my son.

The following Saturday is the first game--The Terminators, Sam’s team, versus The Eagles. Before the game, Sam tells his mother that he feels sick to his stomach, but with a quick look from me, she ignores him.

I try not to watch the pregame warm-up drills. I manage not to shout across the field to Sam to quit chewing on the collar of his uniform and try to keep his gaze in at least the general direction of the ball.

The game starts and through some sequence of random events, Sam’s foot makes contact with the ball. Sam looks up to see me, his mother, brothers and a neighbor all going nuts. “Yeah, Sam! Way to kick!”

Suddenly this light goes off in his head. All he has to do to get an overwhelming audience reaction is touch his foot to the ball. As Sam later explains to me, it’s just like when we went to a Laker game and cheered for Magic Johnson.

Whatever it takes.

As luck would have it, Sam’s was the last little cleated foot to touch the ball before it went into the goal for the first point of the game.

When I congratulate him after the game on his goal, he corrects me. “No, The Terminators scored two goals and The Eagles did not score any, so we won.”

He has a point. I had never even questioned the idea that the last foot to touch a ball before it goes into a goal gets far more glory than all the other feet that brought the ball down the field.

Fortunately, before I could explain the concept of an individual athlete’s performance statistics, average goals per game, field-goal percentage and the like, Sam ran off to get his postgame snack.

Sam, and his team, scored the first goal of the season. And I have to admit that I have told a few other guys about it. What I have not talked much about is that it may not be too late for me to get team sports--from listening to my son.