About two months ago, my son came to me expressing a desire to quit karate. My wife and I had him in martial arts since kindergarten and we’d honestly thought he’d enjoyed it this entire time. Apparently the kindest ten-year-old boy in the world doesn’t share his father’s joy at either punching people in the face during sparring or getting hit in the face during sparring. Go figure.

Anyway, he wasn’t getting off without going into some other form of physical activity. Enter my son’s friend Charlie (not his real name) who’s one of the popular neighborhood kids and something of a self-styled protector. Putting his arm around my boy, Charlie told him “Relax, you should join my church’s soccer league! You can probably even be on my team! My dad’s best friends with the director!”

This was amusing to me on several levels. First, my wonderfully empathic son who’s never asked for anything in his life and always put his sister before himself was leveraging one of his friendships to get what he wanted. Second, I was getting suckered into outdoor activities which I’m generally against when it comes to my kids.

Don’t judge. Have you seen how oppressively goddamn hot it’s been this summer?

Anyway, finally this meant that I’d have to ask my next door neighbor for a favor involving church. And this meant I was probably going to get invited to his megachurch that takes up over a city block in West Knoxville.

The things I do for my kids. Fortunately, within a day or two I’d been put in contact with Jeremy, the program director. We set up my son’s new team affiliation and confirmed he and Charlie would play on the same team, then waited for the paperwork to come in.

In the meantime we had to buy Junior some cleats. Dr. S. found some on Amazon that she thought would work, and we order everything from those fucking people anyway, so congrats on taking more of our money Mr. Bezos!

The first practice was unfortunately canceled due to rain. We found out about this on an app called GroupMe. If you’re unfamiliar with GroupMe, it’s what boomers use these days for group texts. Or soccer moms. Takes both kinds. Anyway, I got invited to the GroupMe by my next door neighbor and then had to recommend Dr. S. get invited once I was accepted. It’s kind of like getting into an exclusive Vegas nightclub and bringing your friends except the doorman’s way more tolerant of your bullshit.

Once we got to the first practice, I met the coaches, Matt and Andy. They’re brothers who look nothing alike: Matt has a full head of hair and a long beard while Andy’s clean shaven and bald. Listen to the two of them finish each other’s sentences for a couple of minutes and you’ll get the family relation quickly. We also found out that our team’s jersey color was going to be red and that our team would be representing….South Korea.

“You should see when they play North Korea,” my neighbor joked. “There’s a fight after.”

Apparently the teams were based on colors of jerseys. This made sense at first: There’s yellow in Brazil’s flag and Brazil’s jerseys were yellow, just as there’s red in South Korea’s flag.

Then there was Chile, who’s jersey color was hot pink. I have a theory the church got this color at a discount and Jeremy the director decided to pass this jersey off to the one mom coaching a team. It’s not been proven, but it’s not been disproven either, so I’ll take it as the one logical answer until told otherwise.

The first game came and it was at 9 am on the church rec league soccer field. We brought chairs and clapped appropriately at the times it seemed right to do so. Chile killed us 4-0 in that first game. Our second game was against “Greece,” who was short one team member so we loaned them a child to avoid a forfeit.

Now this child managed to draw several handball fouls and gave our team at least three penalty kicks that resulted in goals. This drew a lot of vocal criticism from the parents of “Greece’s” kids, who swore it was the only reason our team won the game 5-0. I wanted to point out the game would’ve never happened if we didn’t loan them a kid, but my wife said that would be pouring salt in a putrid looking wound.

This Saturday my wife’s not coming and I have to bring a snack for the entire team. Dr. S. tells me that I need to make sure it’s at least somewhat healthy. I’m not personally worried about being judged as these kids got Pop-Tarts and Oreos for the first two Saturdays. They can deal with pretzels and juice as far as I’m concerned.

And then it’s back home to watch my Vols take on Mississippi State.

Nice to see we’re still able to keep Saturdays in the fall revolving around Football. It’s just two different kinds these days.

See you guys next time!