alex just finished his outdoor soccer season. i fear it may be his last as next year he will be in high school, and i think the nature of the game changes once you get to that next level. i recall my own sports life, meager as it was, drying up post junior high.

alex's soccer life has been exciting to watch on a few dimensions. first, when he was in third grade they re-shuffled his distr ...

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. watch out

alex has played soccer for several years. over this span, he has developed into quite the defensive specialist, namely because the first team he played on got whooped up on pretty regular so we had lots of practice defending the goal. and, alex was the team's prize student in this regard understanding how to position himself to disrupt shots on goal, harassing players as to not let them get situated and the like.

one problem alex possessed when playing defense is he always had a giant smile on his face. several times i explained he should try to smile less or at least less enthusiastically because a smiling defensemen did not seem very intimidating, but some parts of nature cannot be controlled ( exhibit 1, exhibit 2, exhibit 3, exhibit 4, need i go on?)

alex's second team had an unnatural number of kids who ravenously loved soccer and played constantly. this equated to a lot of natural scorers and there's nothing a bevy of goal-minded kids loves more than a kid who likes playing defense because it means less time sharing the spotlight which means more shots on goal. this meant alex became a quick star on his team because he was one of the few kids who always asked to play dee.

but thanks to some gentle nudges from the coaches over the years (and surely helped by some blowouts where they were trying to pull the big guns off the front line), alex found himself on the offensive side of the field. as you'd expect, it is surely a different game up there and you could see alex working through the math of it all.

his intuition about the sport has been visibly improving but he'd yet to score a goal. then this last weekend, he scored not one but two goals in a game. after the first, when he turned from the goal to run back to middle field you could have seen the white of his smile from two pitches away, which sounds impressive until you consider that you could have seen my smile, FIVE pitches away.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. jack, you're in

after alex's indoor soccer game this weekend, a coach of a team playing next asked if alex would like to play again as his team was short a player. we asked alex and, amenable as always, he said sure. i gave the coach the tip that alex was an outstanding mid-fielder and sent them on their way.

as marty has just spent the last hour wrangling anthony in the rec center while i helped coach alex's team, i said i'd keep anfer occupied. as we were walking to the bleachers to watch the game, a neighbor i haven't seen in a while stopped me to say hello. we exchanged pleasantries and when i turned to continue to the seats anthony was no longer at my side. my head panned around the large indoor arena for a sign of him amidst a sea of kids and parents. nothing. then i saw people in the stands laughing and pointing. i looked in the vicinity of their cheers and saw that moments after the whistle blew staring the next game, the one alex was playing in, anthony had climbed over the wall and was charging towards the goal. i immediately set out sprinting around the arena wall to where you could get on the field (by where the players sit). by the time i got there one of the coaches had run anthony down and handed him over the wall to me. i carried the fitful boy over my shoulder to the bleachers and sat him next to me telling him not to move.

after less then three minutes, he turned to me and said he was bored and wanted to go home. i told him alex just started playing in a game and we wouldn't be going home for an hour. he groaned. as i turned to address him further, i saw a colorful magazine under the bleachers. i told anfer he should go down and get that book and see if it was any good. it looked like a pokemon catalog or something but truth told only five minutes into my assignment of keeping tabs on the child, i wouldn't have cared if it was an x-rated anime catalog if i thought it would keep him within grabbing distance for the next fifty seven minutes.