Joel’s Heart is Bigger than Mine

I am not a soccer guy. And that is not a knock against the sport. I just grew up playing baseball, football, and basketball. It was all we had in McKenzie, Tennessee, back when Ike was running the country.

I am not counting grapevine swinging across the big ditch, balling yourself up inside an old tire and being rolled off a cliff, or playing mumbly-peg barefooted, with a double-bladed knife, as a sport. And I don’t believe Leon using me as a punching bag in those early days could ever be construed as a sporting event. Although he saw that differently.

Now, the school did build some tennis courts behind the gymnasium when we were in junior high. I borrowed a racket and went down to try this “new” sport out. Emily Scarbrough, who was a grade behind me, beat me something like 23 games in a row.

My tennis career ended forever. In kind of an embarrassing and inglorious manner.

We’d never heard of soccer back then. Kick-the-can might have been as close as we came to that sport. And I can tell you, it was hard to hit that small, cylinder-shaped Pet Milk can with your foot, especially when you were flying across Richard Gregg’s front yard after dark!

Grandchildren are a wonderful breed. And they can get you to do things that you wouldn’t do for anyone else. Max is knee deep into soccer. So, naturally, I found myself this past weekend on the sidelines at a soccer tournament in Savannah, Georgia. Max had called earlier, “We are taking a road trip, KK.”

Boy Howdy.

I’m still trying to learn some of the rules. I do appreciate all the running involved in this game. It bespeaks of discipline, hard work, attitude, fortitude, and a certain stick-to-it-ness that you couldn’t learn quite as vividly in a math class.

Max has a great coach, and a whole team of special friends. You don’t have to “know” soccer to see the goodness in that. It was a treat to be around those young boys for the weekend, watching them having fun, on and off the field.

’Course, as the sun rose over a hot Savannah morning, and the sweat began to trickle down my back, I began to wonder about my fortitude….

All of this was rolling through my mind as I watched “our team” run up and down the field, trying to gain an advantage with the next kick, pass, or defensive play. I was sitting about midfield, a foot maybe off the boundary line, thinking, “I wasn’t this close to the action when I coached high school football!” when my morning took an ethereal turn….

There was a loose ball bounding right at me. The opponents had a young boy racing after it. We had nobody close…. then, seemingly out of nowhere, Joel (pronounced Jo-el’) came flying up from behind, racing with all his heart, attempting with all his might to reach the ball first.

Time stopped entirely.

Joel’s face came into focus as clear as a bell and lingers with me still. His eyes alert and sharp. Just the tip of his tongue was out and to the side of his mouth. Sweat beaded on his forehead. His dark hair raised slightly against the wind. Determination like I’ve seldom witnessed leaped out of every pore on his skin.

His legs were literally flying. His arms racing in perfect sync. He didn’t feel the heat. He didn’t know what time of day it was. He didn’t care if he was in Savannah, or his hometown of Cornelia, Georgia, or Wakefield, Kansas. It wasn’t about his “mother and them.” Or the score. Or the next game. Or swimming later at the motel pool. His whole focus was on the mission. The one right in front of him. At this very second.

You talk about the man in the arena!

It didn’t matter that he was eleven years old. In a junior soccer league. It didn’t matter on this hot August morning that he was playing on a back field 270 miles from home in front of maybe a dozen parents and onlookers.

He was giving everything he had, and then some!

Talk about a moment that transcends a mere sporting event. What if we gave that same effort in our workplace? In our marriage? At church? In the way we treated our fellow man? What if the people who ran our nation put that same honest, straight forward effort into what they were doing?

Shoot, if I had that type of determination telling my little stories I’d be a Pulitzer Prize winner by now!

I stopped in Jacksonville on the way home and bought a soccer ball. Monday morning, I built a makeshift goal by sticking two shovels in the ground about ten feet apart and tying some string around them.

Cathy put on her only pair of shorts with a stripe down the side and Nike shoes with high socks and is defending that goal. I’m practicing being like Joel as I kick that ball across my backyard….

Respectfully,
K.K. and the Boys