THE PARKING LOT
Volunteer
I recently retired from the most thankless volunteer position in America: team manager of my son’s club soccer team.
Nobody dreams of becoming a team manager.
As a kid, I never imagined lifting a championship trophy with one hand while holding seventeen laminated player cards in the other.
Like most volunteer jobs, it happened the way these things always happen. Someone asked. Nobody answered. I made the mistake of saying, “Sure.”
It started small. Then, almost without noticing, I became responsible for everything.
I brought the player cards and match reports to every game. I checked the team in with the referees. I hauled the tent to tournaments all over California. I coordinated jersey numbers for new players. I organized team parties. I reminded parents about dues. I became the unofficial team photographer.
At one point, I was carrying so much gear that my wife bought me a wagon for Father’s Day. Not exactly what I was expecting. But damn, was it practical.
Every Saturday I carried seventeen laminated player cards with a kid’s picture, name, birthdate, and player ID number.
At first, it felt like office work.
Looking back, it was something else entirely.
Seventeen laminated player cards.
Seventeen kids chasing a dream.
Seventeen parents trying to figure out how much to help... and when to get out of the way.
Without realizing it, I wasn’t really managing a soccer team anymore.
I was managing my growing list of grievances. The tent. The parents-only WhatsApp. The lack of appreciation. The referees. The roster. Everything.
Eventually, there wasn’t much left that wasn’t on the list. And once you’ve built a list like that, you’re just looking for one more thing to add to it.
I’d love to tell you I was different from the parents everyone jokes about… I wasn’t.
Complaining more quietly doesn’t make you any different. We’re all a lot closer to the thing we make fun of than we’d like to admit.
All of this came to a head during a tournament.
A terrible call against us (yep, I’d even started talking like I was on the team) gave the other team a penalty kick in the final seconds.
Tie game.
Our coach exploded into a red card.
One parent started talking about legal action.
Another had to be physically held back from throwing punches at the referee.
And somehow I found myself standing in the middle of it all, pulling up video on my phone to prove the referee had gotten it wrong in hopes of getting the red card rescinded by some tournament coordinator wearing Crocs.
It was chaos.
Then I had a thought that stopped me cold.
It wasn’t really about that call.
It was about every rainstorm that forced us to reschedule a tournament. Every nonrefundable hotel reservation that, thanks to the kindness of complete strangers, somehow became transferable to another weekend. Every early-morning drive-thru Starbucks breakfast that somehow cost $27. Every logistical headache. Every gap in the tournament schedule that tricked you into thinking you had enough time to drive home and back. Every side text. Every email. Every time I looked across the field and wondered how our boys were supposed to compete against kids who looked like they had driven themselves there.
That referee wasn’t carrying all of that.
I was.
It wasn’t one bad call. It was four years of tiny frustrations pretending to be one bad call.
My phone was still buzzing with conversations about the referee, the red card, the penalty, the tournament, and all the what-ifs.
Meanwhile, my son texted one of his teammates, “Want to meet at In-N-Out?”
It was simple. It was glorious. It was exactly what we needed.
Because while we adults could have happily spent another two hours in the parking lot discussing the if-onlys, the buts, and the maybes that stood between this team and a championship trophy... the kids had already moved on.
That’s when I realized that this wasn’t really about my son’s soccer season anymore.
Somewhere along the way, I’d started watching two games.
His... and mine.
Watching the kids laugh over burgers, I couldn’t help thinking about what I remembered from my own childhood. It wasn’t championships. It wasn’t standings. It certainly wasn’t referee assignments.
It was the stories.
When I was a kid, I loved soccer. Then I quit. Not because I stopped loving it. Because basketball was indoors. Soccer was not.
At thirteen years old, I had convinced myself that less sweat dramatically increased my chances of talking to girls. Looking back, this may not have been the strongest career strategy.
Basketball gave me incredible memories. But when my son started playing soccer, soccer gave me mine back.
I can’t tell you who won our rec league championship, but I can tell you exactly why our best player missed it. His parents accidentally put super glue in his eye instead of eye drops. He spent the day in the hospital, which also happened to be the day I became the best player on the team. It was our last game of the season, so technically, nobody ever had the chance to prove me wrong.
I also remember the night Magic Johnson announced he had HIV. I went to my game afterward and scored the best goal of my childhood. In my head, I scored it for Magic. In my memory, I screamed his name to the heavens as tears slid down my cheeks.
Funny enough, I don’t remember whether we won or lost. What I remember are these stories.
None of the things I’d spent all those years worrying about are likely to be the stories my son carries with him.
He’ll remember something else.
Something wonderfully random.
Maybe the greatest gift we can give our kids isn’t making every sports weekend perfect. Maybe it’s giving them the freedom to collect their own stories instead of asking them to finish ours.
I didn’t need the clipboard anymore. I just needed a folding chair. Preferably one with a built-in sunshade, because I believe I’ve already established that I’m not a hat guy.
Maybe growing means realizing you’ve been bringing two kids to every game.
Your child... and the one you used to be.
Eventually, you have to let one of them go.
So both of you can enjoy the match.