Is There Any Recourse For the Weary?

I used to play on a soccer team called The Sidekicks. It was an all boys team, and I was the only girl. Each year, we would play in The Labor Day Classic, a weekend-long soccer tournament held on converted polo fields. It was either boiling hot, the South Texas sun beating down all day on the vast, dry, treeless landscape. Or, oddly enough, it was freezing and the wind would whip and rush across the flat terrain and kick up the ground in a swirling mass of dust and pointy grass blades. And we were terrible. If it weren't for the free t-shirts for all participants, if it weren't for orange halves at half time and powdered donuts and juice boxes at the end of the game, it wouldn't have been worth it. It would have been a complete waste of time.

I remember one year, we played a team from Mexico. They had only one girl too, and she was better than me. She was taller, she was faster. Her passes were more accurate. Her crosses curved beautifully into the feet of her waiting teammates. "You'll cover the girl," my coach told me, "because, well...you know." But cover her I did not. She flew past me, she knocked me over, she stole the ball time and time again. And it wasn't just me that was made into a monkey. All across the field these Mexican hotshots left us in the dust. We chased them down the field in vain. They would shoot the ball in one direction, and our goalie would dive in the other. We were beaten, we were scraped, we looked just plain pathetic. I don't think we scored a single goal. I'm quite certain they scored at least 100. I never thought we'd live it down. I never thought we'd bounce back. We were dejected and ashamed. And worst of all, we were really, really sore.

I haven't thought about this experience in years. It was just pee-wee soccer. There's more to life than sports. You grow up, you move on, the days keep coming one after another. The world doesn't end. But the image, the memory of this defeat rushed back to me yesterday, as I sat in my living room, at least 10 years later, watching Oregon absolutely trounce the Wolverines. The same wave of degradation that washed over me when I was 12 and standing red-faced and breathless on a dusty polo-turned-soccer field, was now flooding our apartment. Touchdown, after touchdown, after touchdown. One missed tackle piles onto another and another. Henne throws an interception. Someone fumbles the ball. Moe pokes Curly in the eyes. Nyuck, Nyuck, Nyuck! It was horrendous.

I didn't think it could get much worse after losing to Appalachian State, but clearly I was wrong. I should have know better, I suppose. After our despairing lost to Team Mexico, it was not as though we, The Sidekicks, suddenly became Olympic caliber. We couldn't run any faster the following weekend. We didn't play any better. We weren't suddenly more skilled. And clearly, neither was Michigan after their mortifying defeat. If anything, they made it a point to play even worse than they had the week before. There was at least no indication that efforts to improve had even been made. It was a head-in-hands kind of evening. No singing of The Victors. No thrusting of fists into the air.

It's not even worth it to be angry, when you get the stuffing beat out of you like that. Take a deep breath. Brush the dust off your legs. Lick your dirty fingers and wipe the blood from your scraped knees. Have a sip of water and wipe your soiled face against your sweat-soaked jersey. All you can do is line up and shake hands with the other team. You haven't won The Labor Day Classic; you haven't even qualified for the next round. But you do get to go home, take a cold shower, and contemplate redemption. And perhaps redemption will come. I'm fairly certain The Sidekicks didn't lose every game we played that year. We weren't always so monstrously beaten. We didn't spend every weekend being dragged through the dirt. But we never really lived it down either. After 10 years, I can still see that girl's long, brown ponytail swinging side to side as I hopelessly followed her down the field. I can still remember the burning in my lungs and on my cheeks. The humiliation that seemed to penetrate all the way down to the very marrow of my bones.

I don't believe that Michigan will lose every game they play this season. I know climate control is an ever-increasing world crisis, but hell is not likely to freeze over just yet. Maybe they'll come out strong next week and beat an equally listless Notre Dame (which, along with Ohio State, is really all that matters). Perhaps they'll even pick it up enough to win out the rest of the season, and somehow become the Big 10 Champs. But then again, maybe they won't. And the latter seems far more likely. In the end, though, whichever scenario comes true, no matter how many games they win or lose, they'll still have started out 0 and 2, with a loss to a I-AA team and an absolute desolation by Oregon. Yeah they'll get over. Sure life goes on. One year will flow into the next and a new season will start, and then another and another and so on until global warming kills us all. But they'll never really live it down. Ten years down the road, sitting in their respective living rooms, it will hit them in a rush: Crable will chide himself for blocking the outside man, instead of the inside one; Henne will shake his head in disbelief at his utter lack of ability when it comes to hitting Manningham, wide open, on the long pass; Mike Hart will wonder if he would have been better off going to a different school, instead of wasting four years of impeccable talent with a program that couldn't win a bowl game. Sure there's more to life than sports. More to this world than winning or losing. But embarrassment...well that sticks with you forever. It nestles down deep inside and lies dormant for a while. There's always something that stirs it to the surface, though. It always comes flooding back into your mind and your skin, burning hot against your cheeks like the callous South Texas sun. And you live the moment over again; you can't help it. In your mind, you pull yourself up from the ground after being repeatedly knocked down. You dust yourself off. You put your hands on your hips and shake your head in disbelief. Yeah, you recognize how far you've come, but you still can't help but think: I can't believe we were that bad.