Category: Soccer

“Thanks” brings me closer

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Today, this month, I turn and return to gratitude. I’ve been looking for poems about thanks and thanksgiving for a church service I’m helping to plan, and I’ve noticed the poems that draw me are tempered with grief, there are many colours woven into the fabric of the experience of thanks they describe. I’ll post one, by Jane Hirschfield, below.

Monday morning thank-you list:

1. Kasia’s yoga class this morning, and her invitation to greet the day by saying, “Good morning, I love you,” to ourselves. (Wow! That changes the wake-up script!)

2. Enough time to work on revisions. Solitude.

3. Invitations to speak. Connection.

4. New projects, old projects, ongoing projects.

On the “new projects” front, in addition to the novel, I’ve got a couple of creative non-fiction pieces being published in anthologies, this year and next. Both are very personal, and a bit raw — “In This River” has just been published in an anthology called Impact: Women Writing After Concussion. Here’s me talking about my concussion (oh, soccer!) and reading an excerpt from my piece. I also “composed” and played the music that accompanies this video (“composed” in quotation marks because it’s just pure improv). A strange after-effect of the concussion: I was able to improvise very freely on the piano; more to do with rhythm than melody, almost as if some interior barrier had been breached.

video edited by Jun Kim

(Monday morning thank-you list, cont.)

5. Stretching myself, learning new skills … like the opportunity to make the recordings, above.

As I think about my relationship to my writing life, I am aware that publishing is a piece of it, and that means a different kind of work and effort and engagement with the world: presenting, public speaking, sharing. Looked at from one perspective, publicity work terrifies me, I’ll be honest. I’m terrified of feeling exposed, of being drained, of being judged wanting, of feeling ashamed. But looked at through the perspective of thanks, everything changes. Good morning, I love you! What if THANKS were the baseline I returned to many times each day?

Thanks brings me closer to wonder and admiration. Thanks brings me closer to patience, calm, the ability to pause. Thanks brings me closer to others. It’s a lens of perspective that gives me a different relationship to time and to self.

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(and one last thank-you on the Monday morning thank-you list)

6. Counselling, meditation, naps, yoga, stretching, running, walking, journalling, this blog, reading poems, writing.

I love these things because they make possible my engagement with everything else. I don’t want to live an entirely interior life — I love that part, it comes easily for me; but I want to be in the world, I want to connect, share, respond, serve, workshop, teach, coach, relate, cradle, hold, feed, nurture, offer of what I’ve been given. You know? It’s a short life. I want to live in it.

xo, Carrie
 

"When Your Life Looks Back," by Jane Hirshfield

When your life looks back —
As it will, at itself, at you — what will it say?

Inch of colored ribbon cut from the spool.
Flame curl, blue-consuming the log it flares from.
Bay leaf. Oak leaf. Cricket. One among many.

Your life will carry you as it did always,
With ten fingers and both palms,
With horizontal ribs and upright spine,
With its filling and emptying heart,
That wanted only your own heart, emptying, filled, in return.
You gave it. What else could you do?

Immersed in air or in water.
Immersed in hunger or anger.
Curious even when bored.
Longing even when running away.

“What will happen next?” —
the question hinged in your knees, your ankles,
in the in-breaths even of weeping.
Strongest of magnets, the future impartial drew you in.
Whatever direction you turned toward was face to face.
No back of the world existed,
No unseen corner, no test. No other earth to prepare for.

This, your life had said, its only pronoun.
Here, your life had said, its only house.
Let, your life had said, its only order.

And did you have a choice in this? You did —

Sleeping and waking,
the horses around you, the mountains around you,
The buildings with their tall, hydraulic shafts.
Those of your own kind around you —

A few times, you stood on your head.
A few times, you chose not to be frightened.
A few times, you held another beyond any measure.
A few times, you found yourself held beyond any measure.

Mortal, your life will say,
As if tasting something delicious, as if in envy.
Your immortal life will say this, as it is leaving.

What I believe

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I’ve typed, deleted, and typed anew the first sentence. The problem isn’t that there’s nothing to write about and reflect on. The problem is there is so much! And I’m struggling to identify the theme that would bind these disparate aspects of my week together.

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On Wednesday, we held the open house for the second season of The X Page workshop, which will begin in January, 2020. It was an emotional evening, a familiar team of women gathering to meet new candidates for this collaborative, cross-cultural project. I was reminded of the small miracles and many challenges behind and before us. The energy felt familiar: a bubbling sense of adventure, curiosity, wondering, nerves. The desire to hear each other’s stories. To connect on a deeper level. Wondering what we would make together? Wondering, also, where we might go wrong, would we say the wrong thing, make an assumption that would be hurtful, misunderstand one another — this, too, is part of the project, part of any project that transports us out of our comfort zones. This may also be the greatest intrinsic potential in the project: that it may teach us how to sit with discomfort, express it, feel our way through it, forgive and be forgiven, and learn from being challenged, because we often (unconsciously) try to avoid all of this, in our ordinary spheres of reference, our primary contexts.

On Thursday, my emotions were at a low. I felt unworthy in all aspects of my life; I’m not saying it was rational, only that it was what I felt. I mention this because I want to be honest about the ways my emotions can bottom out, sometimes. I was feeling profound despair, weakness. Thankfully, instinctively, I didn’t cancel plans/routines and hide away, even though I wanted to. Friday morning, I got up early to run. I went to visit a friend. Two poultices for my spirit: exercise and friendship. My emotional trajectory could not help but rise.

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On Saturday, I received an award that five years ago would have been unimaginable — I was named Youth Coach of the Year for the district in which my team plays. To be honest, this was one of the things I was beating myself up about on Thursday; I didn’t feel deserving of this recognition. I kept listing all of my limitations as a coach. And then, on Saturday, it came to me — my limitations have been my strength as a coach. Or perhaps, more accurately, awareness of my limitations has been my strength. I prepare for practices diligently. I do my homework. I ask lots of questions. I’ve surrounded myself with assistant coaches whose technical skills are stronger than my own. I’ve benefited from thoughtful mentorship and coach’s education. I was very green when I first volunteered, and I’m grateful to the club for trusting me to learn and grow alongside the players. More clubs should do this. Give moms the benefit of the doubt, the vote of confidence, the support needed to volunteer.

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I’ve invented my idea of what it means to be a coach almost from scratch, because I didn’t play competitive sports as a kid — I didn’t have a role model in mind. (Here’s an exercise: picture a coach. Did your mind conjure a red-faced man pacing beside a field, square-jawed with tension, or yelling at his players?) There were almost no women coaching at my soccer club when I started, and there still aren’t many. I wonder whether a lack of role models actually gave me freedom to develop my own coaching style. It’s not punitive, it’s not authoritarian, and it’s definitely not angry. Honestly, it’s kind of goofy. My approach is light. I think out loud, ask questions, admit when something isn’t working the way I’d hoped, ask players for feedback to see whether we can figure this out together. I enthusiastically admire players’ creativity and technical skills. I try to highlight moments when a player has pushed herself out of her comfort zone to try something new — regardless of whether or not it worked. What I want to create is a collaborative learning environment for everyone. I think and hope this creates an atmosphere of trust and shared knowledge, where players are comfortable saying if they don’t understand something, where they can ask for help, even just tell me that they’re having an off day and they don’t know why.

I want to be the kind of coach, the kind of leader, who is also a participant, a collaborator.

Here’s what I believe. I believe that strength comes from (not despite) vulnerability. I believe that trust is earned by working through challenges, being human together, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding. I believe that knowledge is not fixed and top-down, but ever-curious. I believe that almost all of what we know can be learned only by experience: experience is the source of expertise. It’s also painful, and hard, and sucks sometimes. So we need each other to remind each other of our potential, as individuals, and as a team. I believe we should be seen for who we are, not asked to change ourselves fundamentally to fit in. I believe it’s the coach’s job to position players for success, to see and believe in them, so they can see and believe in themselves.

I believe that your team needs you to be you. And my team needs me to be me.

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Last but not least — it’s not worth it if isn’t fun. That’s the glue that sticks all of this, all of us, together.

xo, Carrie

 

Box out the pressure

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I have a lot on my mind. And somehow that has translated into silence. How to sift through the jumble and identify items worthy of sharing? I seem to exist in a fog of confusion, at least right now.

Last week was absorbed by creating a roster for this season’s soccer team. A painful, heart-rending process, in all honesty. Humbling and bruising, too. A large part of me rebels against the levels imposed by competitive sport that claim to filter children into good, better, best. It isn’t an objective process, yet it’s treated as such; worse, there’s an implicit assumption that the teams themselves are good, better, best, based on level alone, and that a child’s experience would therefore be improved by moving up, and would deteriorate by moving down. I know what I can offer, as a coach, but within the competitive framework, it often feels like what I can offer doesn’t actually matter.

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I’ve been waking in the middle of the night, unable to fall back to sleep. Mind racing. Body restless.

Not thinking about these things, exactly, but about the everything, the jumble, the chaos of a world that claims to be about one set of rules and values, while operating on a completely different set of tacit rules and values. Winning. Winning by any means. Power. Shows of dominance, especially rage. Shaming. Placidly public corruption. Lies. Assume everyone is lying to you, or you’re naive. Well, dammit, then I’m naive! The values we encourage our children to adopt could almost appear cruelly out of step in the context of this greedy, ego-ascendant world: be kind, share, be trustworthy. But that’s what I want to be and to do.

That’s the space I want to hold open.

I keep picturing the frame we teach players to make with their arms, to protect the ball and box out the pressure. It’s a strong stance, but not aggressive or violent or dirty — you don’t lift your elbow to hurt the attacking player, you simply use the steadiness of your body and of this frame you’re creating to hold your ground.

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The conclusion I keep coming around to, amidst all the confusion and noise, is: I want to be kind. It’s actually almost the only thing I want to be. I don’t think much else matters to me, in the end, and in the right now. I accept that kindness can go awry, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, that kindness, offered in ignorance, can cause suffering. And maybe I’m talking about something bigger, deeper, wider than kindness. Maybe I’m talking about love. Love; and attention. But it’s easier to start with kindness. Kindness is easier to grasp in the moment.

There is a mantra that’s been keeping me grounded, as much as it’s possible to be grounded, whenever it feels like I’m whirling away or spiralling down: I am loving awareness. It helps when I’m worrying about being judged, or am judging others, when I’m second-guessing my choices, or letting external pressures and feedback (real and perceived) affect my state of mind.

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Here’s a ten-minute meditation to sit with.

(If the visuals in the video turn you off, just listen to the sound. Or don’t listen to anything at all, just repeat the phrase I am loving awareness, till you know it’s true.)

xo, Carrie

Pure joy

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I often come to this blog when I want to capture something ineffable — a mood, a moment, an emotion. It’s become a container for that which is fleeting (okay, what isn’t fleeting?); or, more precisely, for that which I want a record, a trace of what it felt like, or what it meant, whatever “it” was.

Today, I come to this blog to record what it felt like to watch a player score a massively critical goal in an intense and challenging match — the game-changer. I keep returning to this moment in my mind, and replaying the passes that led up to it, as well as the pure joy that seemed to pour through my body as I crouched and opened my mouth and SCREAMED that joy right out from my guts. (Everyone else was screaming too, so my own yell didn’t stand out.)

The scream felt so spontaneous and so free, like it was coming from a pure, deep well of emotion. Wonderful emotion. I’ve been on the other side, witnessing an important goal scored against our team, and I know that the emotions there (at least for me) are flattening or deadening; I don’t feel much. There’s a recognition that disappointment happens, and sometimes things don’t work out, and also that it’s just a game.

It is just a game.

But I actually wonder, upon reflection, whether it just being a game made this particular moment of joy that much purer and simpler, too. I can think of other joyous emotional moments, but they all come freighted with a shadow side. The birth of a child is joyous, and terrifying; the love you didn’t know you’d feel is shadowed with the possibility of a loss you hadn’t fathomed before. And when The Juliet Stories was shortlisted for a Governor General, I also experienced a moment of joy that was almost without compare; but in the same moment, I nearly collapsed from the weight of all those years of waiting and work.

It shouldn’t seem like a goal in a soccer game should make me feel the same level of joy. And yet I’m here to report that it did. It totally did! But it was joy without anything else attached — no shadow side, no deeper responsibility, no fulfillment of a life’s dream. Just joy, pure and simple. And I think I felt that level of joy so purely because it was just a game. Because I knew that it really didn’t matter one way or the other, in the great scheme of things. Our team would still be a terrific team, and we still would have had an awesome season, with lots of good memories, even if the goal hadn’t happened.

But it did happen. And when it happened, it was a beautiful manifestation of things working out, of the opposite of disappointment — potential fulfilled. And my response was a full-body scream of YES!

A cross-field through-ball deep to space — an absolutely massive kick from a player I’ve loved coaching for three seasons now; a gutsy run onto the ball, and a turn and a cross from a player new to the team this season who has been a fiery force to behold; and a charging run onto the ball and perfectly placed one-time shot into the back of the net from a player I coached years ago in house-league, who joined our team this season, and who I knew had exactly that kind of high-pressure finish in her.

Our fiery force scored a beautiful goal not long after to close out the game. I screamed again, just as loud. Might have wiped away a few tears too.

I suppose it is a pretty intense emotional investment to coach a group of players over a season; many of them now for four seasons. I’ve seen them grow up from ten-year-olds to teenagers. I’ve seen their skills develop through effort, willingness to push themselves, practice, trial and error. I’ve seen them learn and re-learn how to work together as a team, not just as individuals. And I’ve seen them become who they were today: a team full of potential, fulfilling their potential. It’s awesome to peak at the end of the season. We play in the cup final next weekend, just like we did last season. And all 18 players were part of this win today.

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As I said in my pre-game speech (short, and a bit emotional): I’m so proud to be their coach, and I’m so proud of everyone’s development and progress this season. I finished by saying that I was really hoping we could get one last game together next weekend, and (as they already knew), for that to happen, we’d just have to win.

And they did.

I think we all must have really wanted one last game together.

xo, Carrie

Team captain

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Our soccer season came to an end yesterday morning. Our last game was in the league’s Cup final. “Let’s make our season last as long as possible,” I told the players last weekend, before our first playoff game, “because it’s really fun playing together.” And the team accomplished that goal. Turns out I can coach competitive soccer; truth is, it doesn’t change my approach greatly. We had a winning season, and saw improvement every step of the way, as individuals, yes, but mostly as a team. In fact, that’s exactly how we won every game we won — as a team. We lost as a team and tied as a team, too. No matter the outcome, there was no acrimony, no fingers pointed, no blame — I worked hard to model that from the top down. Instead, there was assessment, analysis, and practices designed to work on our challenges.

“You don’t yell at us,” one of the players told me yesterday, when we were saying goodbye. “And you don’t yell at the refs.” It’s true. I don’t like being yelled at, or find it helpful or motivational, and I don’t know many adults who do; why would kids respond any differently? (Also, my voice isn’t particularly strong, so yelling is never going to be an effective strategy for communication, for me.)

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The parents are part of the team too!

For the last number of games, the girls have been asking whether the whole team could be “captain” when the referees call for captains. They really enjoyed discussing what that would look like — the whole pack of them crowding up for the coin toss — and how it would be received — how surprised everyone would be. I was thinking about that this morning, as I reflected on our season together. I was thinking about how accurate that is as a metaphor for this particular and special group of players.

How evenly the leadership and respect was spread throughout the team. How much the players trusted each other on the field, and understood each other, off the field. How thoroughly players relied on each other’s support in games, and how rewarding that was to watch from the bench.

I think this team was special because they understood (intuitively) that they were a collective body, stronger because all could be captain.

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For the last game, when the captains were called, I did not go with the girls’ request to send the whole team. I’ve never seen a whole team go when captains are called, and I’m pretty sure it just isn’t done; I wasn’t prepared to introduce that kind of chaos for the refs into the ritual of the coin toss. Instead, I chose as captains our goalie and our striker, the players from the back of the field and the top of the field, which seemed to hold a symbolic symmetry, containing the whole team between them.

We didn’t win our last game. We went in as underdogs against a team that had gone undefeated all season, and we were unable to twist the storyline in our favour. We did the best we could in the circumstances dealt to us, which is what teams do. At the end of the game, the girls were disappointed, but not in each other. There was no acrimony, no blame, just tired legs and the smiling faces you see above. Plus it was fun to get medals and hoist a trophy for our efforts. Tryouts for next season start on Saturday …

xo, Carrie

Sometimes you’ve got to take a stand

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Oh my goodness, I’m flying off in a million different directions these days. Is this only the second week of summer holidays?? We kicked off our summer with a weekend at my brother and sister-in-law’s farm. The heat was something else. We watched all of the World Cup games, went to the beach, performed the annual burning of the homework, lit some fireworks, chilled around the fire taking turns playing DJ, listening to our favourite songs. It was sweet.

Kevin flew off to Montreal for a couple of days last week.

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Then we drove to Kingston for a soccer tournament (that’s me on the end feeling like a champion … and looking somewhat shorter than our team’s tallest players, some of whom aren’t quite 13 yet! Keep growing, girls!). In a bizarre twist, our team actually won all three of our opening games … but did not advance to the semi-finals. I’ve never seen a tournament organized like this, and hope never to see one like it again. The good news is, our team had a blast during the off-hours, plus on the field the girls played like stars, revealing inner grit and resolve and team joy, coming from behind to win each of the games. We had lots to cheer for.

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I spent Sunday afternoon driving across Ontario to drop CJ at camp, where he’ll spend the week. It was a very long day, and the air conditioning in my little car DID NOT WORK. (Did I mention how hot it’s been?) Thankfully, I had a driving companion — Angus came along for the ride, and kept us entertained. We spent quite awhile making top 5 lists in the following categories: soups, salads, and sandwiches. Of course, this was over the supper hour when we were barrelling toward camp and not wanting to stop unless absolutely necessary. Discussion of our top 5 sandwiches inspired a long riff on the classic old-fashioned assorted sub. We were so hungry! Angus texted Kevin, who had already arrived home with the girls, requesting he pick us up exactly these sub sandwiches from Pepi’s, a local pizza place that Angus had heard makes good subs. Kevin kindly agreed. Then Kevin texted with the bad news: a hose had burst and the kitchen and basement were flooded.

Eep!

Fortunately, this calamity had only just happened, likely less than half an hour before their arrival home. What could have been a total disaster was just a really messy cleanup (which I wasn’t too terribly sorry to have missed).

The sub sandwiches from Pepi’s were waiting when we got home … very late … The sub was exceptionally tasty. Definitely my # 1 sandwich. Also, the basement was drying out. Also, there were mountains of laundry.

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In other news, the kid pictured above got her cast off. (Wrist broken in a soccer game.) But she can’t play for another couple of weeks. She is not loving her role as bench-warmer.

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In other other news, I’m working on a potentially BIG project. So is Kevin! (Different projects.) I will share news when/if these projects get off the ground. I feel energized. It’s Marg. Her example was powerful, and I’m lucky to have known her — a woman who used her skills and talents and personality and time here on earth to take charge, take a stand, stand up, speak out, clear and grounded in her intentions and values. Sometimes this means walking toward conflict, rather than away. Difficult decisions, taking responsibility — this is tough stuff for those of us trained to be nice and likeable. I think we need to stop fearing conflict, fearing push-back. Our power is within us, people. I feel it when I run in the mornings. I feel it when I write. I feel it when I reach out to my community. I know what I love, I know what I believe in. I know that the world will always be troubled, there will always be weariness, grief, injustice, greed, unchecked self-interest. I can’t fix that. What I can do is respond to opportunities to be otherwise, to be the change. I remember that I started coaching soccer because I noticed no moms were coaching, and I thought that was weird and a bit sad. Why did the dads get to have all the fun? Then it occurred to me — why was I complaining about it? I could just volunteer and coach! It’s pretty simple, really. If you see something that bothers you, ask yourself: can I change this? If not, can I respond in some other proactive way?

Respond with love, not fear, at every opportunity. That’s the key.

xo, Carrie