Well, those of you that know me, know of my passion for “Lo Sport”. It has been virtually impossible to keep up with things in the states here in Italia due to the time change and complete lack of coverage on television. There is no ESPN and if by chance there is a scant NFL game shown on satellite, it comes on at the un-godly hour of 2:30 in the morning. After a great bottle of Brunello, I don’t love anything that much! With that said, this time of the year is unquestionably one of my favorites with the NFL and College Football seasons hitting full stride and the baseball playoffs stealing the national spotlight. To say that I am home sick for sports would be an understatement. I miss it a lot. Soon it will be college basketball season (Another favorite of mine) which will suck as my Bruins are going to win the national championship this year (You heard it here first) and I won’t be able to see it! All of this will pale in comparison to what will surely be a shallow feeling come spring when baseball begins. I have been Trey’s coach every year since he began playing and there are few things in my life that I cherish more than teaching twelve little boys our national pastime each spring and into the early summer.
I never pondered the beauty of what we have in our country as it relates to sports as much as I have over these past few months. We are truly blessed to have so many wonderful things to follow and get excited about. In Italy, there is really only one sport, Football (Soccer). It’s a fine sport I suppose, but lets be real, you can’t compare one sport to the wonderful menu that we have to offer. Sure in Italy they have Formula One, Rugby and European basketball, but for the sake of this comparison, I think we should stick with REAL sports, not crap! Fiorentina (Florence’s team) is off to a good start thus far and the city is a buzz about it, but I just can’t seem to get into professional soccer just yet. I truly do appreciate the grace and athletic ability shown on the European soccer field, but the games are difficult to follow with the broadcasts in Italian. One aspect of soccer that I find to be particularly interesting is the raw emotion of the fans. It makes sense when you think about it though. I have isolated four things that place the passion at a fever pitch:
Each contest is played between cities that are in much closer proximity to each other than at home. When the Chargers play the 49ers for example, you have two teams from the same state but that are about 600 miles apart. In soccer, it is much more typical to that two teams are playing each other with only fifty to one hundred miles of separation from one another (Similar to the great rivalries of the Steelers/Browns or the Cardinals/Cubs.
Many times the matches are between teams from different countries (Yet still geographically close) giving contests the added international dynamic and national pride.
History plays a significant role as well and Europe has a much richer history than we do. In Italy for instance you can have a match between Florence and Pisa (40 miles of separation) and you have two cities that have hated each other for 800 years with numerous bloody battles taking place as the two cities were at constant war in the middle ages.
A constant pitchers duel! Think of two great pitchers throwing against each other every game and you have a soccer match. Goals are so hard to come by that its sheer bedlam when someone finally scores.
With all this said I will take our sports over anything offered here all day long!
Trey ventured onto the soccer field himself in early October. Practice began three weeks prior so he was one step behind from the get go. Actually, he was numerous steps behind as it turns out! Man, can the kids on his team play! Over the past two weeks of attending two 90 minute practices a week, I have thoroughly enjoyed watching these nine year old kids play their national sport. In Italy, kids soccer is a ten month season which begins in September with two months of training and has games ending in the mid summer! There simply is no other sport that they play, hence the reason they are so damn skilled at such a young age. I coached AYSO last year, so I think that I have a pretty good grasp on talent and would tell you that there are at least five kids on this team that could play at the twelve year old level in California. The ball handling and passing skills are simply far superior to anything that I have seen from this age group. Last year Trey was the second best player on my team and scored 11 goals in 12 games. On this team he is the teams least skilled player. The combination of a late start, superior skill level of his teammates and the difficult challenge of learning a sport from coaches who don’t speak English (not to mention the fact none of his teammates speak English either) had him pretty lost on the field during practice. Anna went to the fourth practice with me and was shocked as to how lost he looked out there. It was as if he was a stranger in a foreign land. Our assessment is that he would need to practice at least two more days a week (Total of four) on top of games and tournaments on the weekend to become competitive. This of course doesn’t leave a lot of time for homework and any other activities that a nine year old boy would want to participate in. We presented Trey with the option of hiring Simone to work with him two extra days after school (Simone is a life long soccer player) or bowing out now, before the season begins. This of course was a difficult decision for him that had him in tears as I have pounded into his head since he was a small child that “If you want to be good at something you work harder than anyone else, BUT you never quit”. For me, it was an equally difficult dilemma.
The sport fanatic and achievement oriented side of me envisions Trey becoming a terrific soccer player and overcoming all of the challenges that he faces. The life lessons that could be learned from overcoming so many obstacles to fit in and achieve equality with the Italian boys in their national sport would be something that could serve as a spring board to his confidence in other aspects of life.
The father in me sees my son struggling in sports for the first time and doesn’t want to throw his life our of balance by having him commit to a life of sleep, school and soccer, without even a half day free to play with his friends or to ride his bike. I also see that he is not fitting in and struggling to muster passion and enthusiasm. To those that have seen him play, he is not the typical Trey, outrunning the opponent to the ball and leaving his soul on the field when he plays.
After much deliberation, Trey decided to opt for being a nine year old boy and not becoming the next Beckham! We feel like he made the right choice. There is a baseball (Trey’s favorite sport) team being organized in a neighboring town that I am going to look in to and he wants to learn to play tennis. Weekends will be strange now that we don’t have sporting events to attend (Anna and I just love watching him play) but everything happens for a reason. We will see what new hobbies spawn from the free time that he has.
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