Teammates

Antonio watches teammate Emily put her best foot forward.

Last Thursday afternoon I had the pleasure of taking in a youth soccer game at the Bryan Park complex. The fourth-grade purple-clad coed team from the Fan District's Fox School met a coed squad in green from Hotchkiss playground in Northside.

The action was back and forth as neither team held an advantage for long. At the final whistle previously undefeated Fox had lost the contest. Hotchkiss 3, Fox 2.

Immediately afterward, Fox coach Bruce Coffey gathered his players for some announcements. The team dinner was discussed. The season was over and the kids snapped back into their nine-year-old world with its own off-the-field concerns. It was impossible to tell they had just lost a game. Significantly, I didn’t hear one excuse for the loss, not one whine or accusation, none of that. I suspect they have a good coach.

Now if we could just keep those happy children from watching ESPN to learn how to act like Me-First jerks while playing team sports ... that's another story. This sports story is about healthy children running on grass in the sunlight and learning how to be a teammate.