I was too rushed in August to do a very good job packing, but I did manage to pack my soccer gear. I knew I wanted to play when I got here, and just needed to find an opportunity to.
The first came about a week ago when I played indoor with the men. I was welcome to play, but at first the German men tended to back off and give me a lot of space to handle the ball. It was only when the American men who were also playing started attacking me that then the German ones followed suit. I don't think it was a referendum on how the German men thought I actually played – I think it was just that they didn't know what to expect from a woman player and they just wanted to be polite (non-aggressive). The American men seemed more used to women players, however, and so were more comfortable putting the requisite pressure on me. And then, especially after I started attacking them, the German men started attacking me and all was well.
The game I played on Friday was nominally coed: it was technically a scrimmage between the women's team and alumni men, but only one other woman showed up. Again, the men watched to see how I was going to play and then reacted accordingly. Particularly in that instance, I think they would have tolerated poor playing because I don't think they necessarily expected more. Fortunately they didn't really need to. Until I was slowed by the blisters I got from the indoor game I played solidly, scoring and saving goals. (I had to buy sneakers with non-marking soles to play in the gym, and they require some breaking in, apparently.)
But at Malente... Malente was something else, a tremendous validation after many years of frustration. Of all the people there, probably 200 or so, I was the only woman who played in the soccer game there. I don't really understand why that was, although I have some theories. I would have expected, in a country where soccer is so popular, that everyone would play, men and women. But it seems to be very much a man's sport, and perhaps not as accessible for women as it is for men. In the US, I think it is particularly accessible for women, maybe even more so than for men, in part because the men get sucked up by football and baseball. Whereas in the fall, if a girl does a team sport, it's likely to be soccer. As a result, in the US there are now a lot of adult women who play, and I've even played in adult leagues with some of them.
But before I sing the praises of US girls' youth sports opportunities, it should be pointed out how often they (and indeed all youth sports) so often squander talent and enthusiasm of so many kids. Because here's the thing: when I was a kid, I loved to play always went out for the teams. But in games, I sat on the bench a disproportionate amount of time. Now, I will admit that I'm not the fastest, strongest, or most coordinated of athletes. But I love to play. And I know how to use the talents I do have to contribute to the success of team play. So why didn't they let me play?
(Perhaps it should also be mentioned that I was not the most popular kid either, and some coaches were more likely to play their daughters and their daughters' friends than the other girls they were stuck with having on the team. Granted, this was more often my experience with softball than soccer. But this kind of favoritism happened with soccer too, and was particularly appalling on my freshman high school soccer team.)
So let's look at what happened after we all grew up: some kids who played then surely still play now, and just as surely some kids that got to play then got bored and stopped. And some kids who were really gifted were pressured to play too much, blew out their knees, and now they can't play at all.
Meanwhile, *I,* the kid who wasn't good enough to get playing time, is apparently good enough as an adult to join a game fielded entirely by men, men of a country where soccer is massively popular, and not only not play badly but play well enough that people made a point to come up afterwards and tell me how well I played. Not only were they completely impressed that a woman wanted to play and could play, but they were objectively impressed with how I played. Which is not to say that I'm the greatest soccer player ever. But I ran hard, I played aggressively, I got open, I passed well, and I even scored. I knew how to use the talents I had to the betterment of my team. The World Cup we weren't ready for, but we could be competitive enough that the whole experience was thoroughly enjoyable for all. And, really, with sports that's all that really matters.
The thing that really makes me seethe, however, is that were it not for my sheer obstinate refusal to let go of sports despite coach after coach, team after team, trying to rip all the joy of playing from me, I would not have been able to do what I just did yesterday: play well and have fun. Only because I insisted on having this be part of my life is it still today. And that's a shame, particularly for all the other kids – the perpetual benchwarmers – who are deprived of having sports in their adulthoods because it was denied to them when they were young. More than a shame, it's a tragic waste.
I do find it interesting, also, that I play better today than I did back then. And I think it has something to do with the ridiculous pressure placed on me when I played on youth teams. Because I was always a perennial benchwarmer, every shred of playing time that I managed to get was laden with an unbearable weight of needing to prove myself in THAT particular moment for fear of being yanked out of the game and not getting another chance. I never felt like a good player, and I was essentially told as much during every game when I only got a fraction of the playing time my teammates did. Whereas when I started playing as an adult, I never introduced myself as a bad player. And because no one expected me to be, I wasn't. I was able to perform not only tolerably, but at a higher level than I ever had as a kid.
So I will enjoy my time in Germany, and play as much soccer as my schedule will allow. I've been learning the words and phrases you are supposed to shout out to your teammates, like "hintermann!" (sp?) when there's a player coming up to attack the ball, or "ecke" when it's a corner kick. But that's not really the important thing. There is nothing else quite like the thrill of competition, of getting out there on the grass (or the gym) on a fall day to run around and challenge yourself to play as well as you can. It is one of the things I want to have in my life, so I will.
Written 10/2, posted 10/3.