Soccer Star

My soccer team added a few new players at the first of the year. It’s pretty typical. We have a rotating cast of characters. Some girls only play in the summer, others only play in the winter, girls go on pregnancy hiatus or they break their ankle or whatever.

I show up at our first game in this current season and we’re all sitting around, putting on our gear and bitching about this ridiculous chick on the other team. And I’m checking out the new girls. You can tell a lot about a soccer player by what they’re wearing and how they’re wearing it. Braid your ponytail? You’re probably pretty good. Same for if you wear your socks a certain way – pulled up right below your kneecap. (If you’re crappy, you’re more likely to wear your socks much shorter.) The length of your shorts is a huge indicator. If you’ve been playing soccer all of your life, you wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of short shorts. Or a pair of shorts that aren’t soccer shorts. Those jogging shorts that you bought at Target that sort of look like soccer shorts? They’re not soccer shorts. Champion doesn’t make soccer shorts.

I realize that this sounds catty, but it’s absolutely true. It’s just a cultural thing. Soccer culture. If you’ve been playing soccer your whole life, you dress for soccer like a soccer player. And if you’ve been playing soccer your whole life, you’re probably pretty good.

Anyway. So I’m checking out the new players and the one looks really, really familiar. And I know immediately who she is but then I convince myself that I have to be mistaken. There’s no way that I could be recognizing a girl from middle school.

Middle school.

But then I heard her name – Willow – and, yeah, it’s obviously her.

And I just put it out there. I’m like “yo, we went to middle school together.”

It was sort of awkward but whatever.

And she didn’t play soccer in middle school. And she wasn’t dressed like a soccer player. So I wasn’t surprised when she got on the field and had no idea what she was doing.

(Side note: I told this story to another girl I went to middle school and high school with and she was like “I saw on Facebook that she was playing soccer for the very first time!”)

Whatever. It’s cool. I didn’t grow up playing hockey. People pick up new sports all the time.

After our game last week, I was walking to my car with the girl who organizes my team. We were talking soccer and she says “yeah, I’m a little disappointed with Willow. She told me before she joined the team that she had played college soccer.”

“SHE SAID SHE PLAYED COLLEGE SOCCER?!” Shocked would be a good way to describe my reaction. “SHE DIDN’T EVEN PLAY MIDDLE SCHOOL SOCCER! WHO DOES THAT?!”

Seriously. Who does do that? Like, do you think that if you buy a pair of cleats it comes with skill sewn into the leather? Do you think that nobody would notice? It makes no sense.

People are weird.