It has literally been 20 years since I coached soccer. So when Koenraad Beugelink texted me about helping him coach our Knights boys team, it took me a minute (or two) before responding.<\/p>\n
But given the fact that I have two boys on the team, and the fact that in of all the things I\u2019ve done in my life, coaching soccer might just be the one thing I miss the most, I couldn\u2019t turn it down.<\/p>\n
I remember it like it was yesterday\u2026my first year of teaching. Contra Costa Christian School in Walnut Creek California, the fall of 1996. I was fresh out of university, and the Athletic Director asked me if I wanted to coach the boys\u2019 varsity soccer team. I was a grade 6 teacher, the elementary PE teacher\u2026and now the school\u2019s new boys head soccer coach.<\/p>\n
I was about green as one can imagine. There was nothing quite like it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first game on the schedule was the mighty Los Lomas \u2014 a local public high school that was a soccer powerhouse. At the time, my school Contra Costa Christian had approximately 100 students enrolled in its high school\u2026Los Lomas had 100 students in one English class.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll never forget the practice before that dreaded first game. I stood in front of them and pretended to be in complete control.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst and foremost,\u201d I said, \u201cI am a Christian and our year and our team is going to reflect this.\u201d And then I really don\u2019t remember much after that (other than saying the usual \u201ccoach\u201d type things to get a team to believe in themselves).<\/p>\n
At that first practice, I discovered that no one on the team had played goalie before<\/strong><\/span>, so I officially anointed one of the tallest and largest guys on the team \u2014 Arie. I knew he was a great baseball player, so he must have good hands and instincts.<\/p>\n It was a Friday night game. The lights were bright and our boys were incredibly excited. As it was the first game of the season, we had a ton of parents and students out\u2026there was something in the air that night.<\/p>\n The game started and we were getting dominated. But Arie, playing in his first game ever as a goalie, kept our team in it with some great saves. All of a sudden, we had a counter-attack and one of our mid-fielders took a shot from long distance that went in!<\/p>\n We were actually winning\u2026against Los Lomas!<\/p>\n And then, from out of nowhere, one of our forwards scored a beautiful goal. The whole team and crowd went wild, and we started to believe.<\/p>\n The rest of the game was mostly a blur. Los Lomas did manage to score one goal and Arie came up with some great saves\u2026but we won the game!<\/p>\n It was a bit like a David and Goliath type game from a movie script\u2014 a bunch of misfits from a tiny school that nobody knew about<\/strong><\/span>, playing a soccer powerhouse, and defeating them by the tiniest of margins!<\/p>\n And now, I find myself back coaching again after all these years. I\u2019m in a very different role as an assistant coach, playing a supporting role. But I sure do love the joy and satisfaction that comes from leading a group of youth towards a common goal and doing so in the context of a Christian community.<\/p>\n P.S. In their first \u201cnon-league\u201d game of the season, our ACS Knights, who are expecting to be in a \u201cre-building\u201d type of year, defeated Unity Christian (a bit of a soccer powerhouse themselves) 3-2.<\/p>\n Hmmm\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It has literally been 20 years since I coached soccer. So when Koenraad Beugelink texted me about helping him coach our Knights boys team, it took me a minute (or two) before responding. But given the fact that I have two boys on the team, and the fact that in of all the things I\u2019ve […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":3493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-3488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3488"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=3488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Great saves and a goal<\/h2>\n