LAST BRAG, EVER. After 16 years, the ride is over. From AYSO to club to college, I can't believe I won't be lugging the folding chairs out to the sidelines to watch my DD play soccer ever again. It's been such a part of our lives as parents for so long, it just doesn't seem real. But this is a brag thread, not a sob-story thread, so here's my final brag entry on SoCal Soccer:
Life gives everyone obstacles. You just never know what form they're going to take. My DD had them both on and off the pitch from early club to her final season in college. When she was 11, her LA Premier (now LA Surf) "A" team coach cut her without any communication. Just logged into the club website one morning and saw she wasn't on the squad anymore. Partly at some of the team parents' urging, he took a bigger, more "athletic" keeper from another club. She cried for hours. She eventually made it as the starter for an ECNL club by her Junior HS year. But then Covid hit and she lost everything that all the 2020 graduate year kids lost: soccer, prom, graduation and then all of her freshman college year. To top it off, that year she was diagnosed with a serious auto immune disorder for which there is no cure, and which is exacerbated by exercise, thus casting every training, workout, practice, and game for the next 4 years into daily jeapordy. And although she started and played and won the majority of games in her first two seasons at her chosen school, she was miserable. The program was run by fear of punishment and soccer had lost all its joy for her. Now with her mental health in a free fall, she was faced with decision to walk away from the sport she loved or transfer. She made the tough decision to transfer to play elsewhere and leave her best friends behind. Now, two seasons later, my wife and I sat with her at dinner after her final soccer match at her new, beloved school and relived her career from start to finish.
It's a well worn adage that unless your team wins the national championship, you will always end your season with a loss (or worse, not making the playoffs at all). So the vast majority of college seniors' careers are punctuated by heartbreak and tears. It was no different for her, having lost in the NCAA DII playoffs in a game that they were oh so close from winning. But as we talked and the tears dried and the pain of the loss subsided, we put it all into perspective. She had been so damn FORTUNATE!! Fortunate to have all of it. Fortunate to have
any of it. How many soccer players never get to where she was? Given her medical problems, she was lucky to have played even a single minute of college ball, much less almost 5,000 of them. 59 Starts. 26 Shutouts. 171 Saves. School record for shutouts in a single season. Second all time in career shutouts. Fourth in career saves. And, as any good soccer obsessed dad would do, I had tracked all the players that she ever played with during club and HS. I asked her, do you know how many of them were still playing college ball as of today? Zero. She was the last one standing. And how about that LA Premier "A" team with the shitty coach and parents who didn't think she was good enough to play with them? Only two of those kids ever played a minute in college, one of them at a juco and the other got a grand total of 98 minutes playing time at a prestious D1 that her parents couldn't stop bragging about before she quit. I can barely find evidence online that the coach of that team is even involved in soccer anymore. I asked her what the low points were of each step of the journey and she recounted all of the above (and more that I won't say publicly). Then I asked her to share the high points and here was her answer: "Literally every moment I spent with this team since I transferred. Every practice, every training, every run, every game, every road trip, every meal. I love these girls and I love my coach." We talked about the lessons she learned from the game and from the process of becoming a college athlete and living that life for four plus years. I asked her what she would do differently and she said, "I wouldn't change a thing, because if all those things hadn't happened, I wouldn't have made it here." I asked her if she'd trade her experience for a national championship at another school. She said, "Not in a million years."
View attachment 23782
I'll still haunt the forum once in a while to follow those of you I connected with over the years here on what my daughter calls "The Soccer Dad Dark Web."
Good luck this weekend to Duke and
@dk_b 's stud daughter. Good luck to
@socalkdg and your awesome keeper. I expect great things and can't wait to read all of your brags.
Queue Sinatra's "My Way"
