Just for Kicks, Try Watching the Ref

So I’m standing in the middle of a soccer field, watching a 6-year-old goalkeeper hold the ball over his head with both hands.

The 6-year-old goalkeeper has no intention of throwing the ball. He has no intention of doing anything. Because as he holds the ball, about 40 people are yelling at him. And he’s never had 40 people yelling at him before.

“Throw it over here!” someone yells.

“Throw it over there!” someone else yells.

For more than a minute, the goalie holds the ball over his head. The longer he holds it, the more people yell. And the more people yell, the less he’s inclined to throw it.

“Just throw the ball!” yells his coach, spinning around and flapping his arms like a duck, the way coaches do when things aren’t going well.

As the referee, I am standing right in front of the little boy with the ball. I can see in his eyes that he has no intention of throwing this ball. He is frozen. There is nothing wrong, really. He’s just frozen.

It happens to 6-year-old soccer players all the time. Sometimes, they just freeze. There is so much going on, so much stuff to remember about footwork and yard lines and where to throw the ball, that 6-year-old soccer players just freeze.

It can really stir up the fans.

“What’s wrong?” asks a grandmother along the sideline.

“He’s frozen,” a parent says.

“Hey, kid, throw the ball!” the grandmother yells.

I can’t blame the kid for not throwing the ball. All this screaming could confuse anybody. So after two or three minutes, I blow the whistle.

“Let me see that ball,” I say.

The goalkeeper hands me the ball. I look at it, as if examining it for defects, then toss it over my shoulder and back into the middle of the playing field.

“Play on!” I yell.

The two teams chase the ball, and the game begins again.

“Nice throw,” the goalie says.

“Thanks,” I say.

Today’s game features two of the finest teams in soccer. On one side, we have the Flying Monkeys of the Apocalypse. On the other, the Purple Slime. Both sides play a clean, smart game. Both sides know what they’re doing. Only occasionally do players actually leave the ground like human missiles and fling themselves at the other team with the intent of entirely destroying them. In those cases, I blow my whistle.

“What’s that, ref?” the coach yells.

“That’s a penalty,” I say.

“What for?”

“For being a human missile,” I say.

“Oh,” the coach says.

As you might guess from their name, the Flying Monkeys of the Apocalypse are the more aggressive of the two teams. From the opening whistle, the Flying Monkeys begin to kick.

They march down the field like redcoats, shoulder to shoulder, kicking anything that gets in their way. Sometimes, they kick the ball. Other times, they kick each other. Sometimes, they just stand in one place and kick at the air, waiting for something better to come along.

They are a close team. If a player goes down, they graciously bend down and pick him up by his ears, the way Lyndon Johnson used to pick up hunting dogs.

“Thanks,” the player says.

“For what?”

“For picking me up by my ears,” the player says.

As I ref, the little red-haired girl sits along the sideline and watches me work. When her game is over, her dad / coach has to referee the next game, and usually she stays to watch.

She likes the way her dad refs soccer games, running up and down the field in his relaxed-fit jeans, tugging at the waistband every few steps to keep them from falling. He runs like a fat guy fleeing a fire, his arms flailing, his ref’s whistle bouncing up and down on his chest.

Up and back he goes. Sometimes the soccer ball ricochets off his legs, but he just keeps running. Up and back, up and back.

She thinks it’s great, the way he refs. Funny and great. Sometimes, she actually cheers for him.

“Good call, ref!” she yells. Or, “Nice jeans, Dad!”

Nobody much cheers for refs, which she doesn’t really understand, because watching her daddy ref is one of the greatest spectacles in sports.

He’s a good ref, she says. He constantly makes her laugh, the way he stumbles over the water bottles along the sideline, holding up his pants and dodging Flying Monkeys all at the same time. He makes it look easy, the way good refs do.

“That’s my dad out there,” she proudly tells her friends.

“What’s wrong with his pants?” one of them asks.

“I don’t know,” says the little red-haired girl. “But he sure can ref.”