Tropical Times

If you live in the islands long enough you learn a deep distrust of weather predictions, especially in the winter. The weather predicted for the Flagler Beach hosted AYSO State Soccer Tournament was abysmal. Abysmal fell well short of adequately describing the weather we endured to watch our kids play soccer in Flagler this weekend.

A storm system; which had dumped a ton of snow from Los Angeles to Georgia, brought a mountain down on the little town of La Conchita and spawned tornadoes all over the middle of the country, was expected to bring the weather equivalent of hell to this sleepy little town on the North East Coast of Florida. It was, in fact, thirty-three degrees, dark and raining when Jon and I finally limped our way into the little driveway of the Lazy Hours Motel, a half mile South of the Pier on A1A, at eleven-thirty PM Friday night.

It was Martin Luther King weekend and the drive from Tavernier, to Flagler Beach had been riddled with wreck after wreck because people in Florida, in spite of decades of practice, still have not f'ing mastered the art of driving in the rain. Abysmal was a kind description for the weather Friday night, or for the next two days of the tournament. Abysmal barely scraped the surface of the misery that was the weather we toughed our way through. Humans were the only animals on the planet stupid enough to be out and about this weekend; specifically, humans fanatically obsessed with youth soccer.

The Lazy Hours Motel, at an astonishingly low fifty dollars a night, was a pleasant surprise. My older sister assured me it had been there across from the Flagler Beach Pier for over forty-five years. My parents had lived in the house next to the Lazy Hours back when Sharon was a baby. My mother used to fondly recount some random hurricane that had slammed ashore and came up far enough over the high sand dunes to cover the first floor.

“Your father evacuated everyone but us. The water was lapping over the floor board of our little pink Carmengia as we were driving out in the middle of the worst hurricane Florida has ever seen.” (To most Floridians, every hurricane that actually center punches them is the worst hurricane Florida has ever seen. Mom has since seen Charlie in Ft. Meyers but still maintains that Donna was worse.)

Hurricanes suck, no doubt about it, and so did the weather this weekend. But our cement block, no frills little room was pretty cozy and Jon’s first game wasn’t until eleven AM. We could sleep in, have a nice, warm lazy breakfast, and brace ourselves to spend a couple of hours out in the cold rain. There’s just nothing quite like sitting on a wet canvas camp chair taking pictures of your kids running around in the cold rain risking broken bones and pneumonia. I could hardly contain my enthusiasm.

Breakfast at The Pier was fantastic. The waitress was politely curious about all the kids invading what is mostly a retirement community. Since they were all wearing soccer uniforms, she correctly guessed it was a sports event. “It’s the AYSO State Soccer Tournament.”

“Really? Wow. Too bad the weather isn’t cooperating for you guys.” A blast of ice cold air rattled the floor to ceiling window looking over the ocean as the waves frothed through the pier pilings and under the restaurant. A seagull was blown back, wings cart wheeling around for balance as it resumed its stoic loft against the steady thirty-knot wind off the water from the north.

“We plan it this way.”

She looked puzzled.

“Seriously. Each year we consult the Farmers Almanac and pinpoint a town in Florida predicted to have the crappiest possible weather for Martin Luther King weekend and that’s where we have this tournament.”

“Seriously?”

“Absolutely.” Jon started laughing and blew it for me. Our waitress finished processing everything I had just said and started laughing with him.

“You nearly had me there for a minute.”

“Yeah. We just seem to get lucky every year with the weather.”

“Well. I hope you win.”

We didn't.

After breakfast, Jon and I took a drive South to see Dad's old house on A1A before heading North to the soccer fields. The house looked the same. The only difference was a poodle rather than a cat peered out of the first floor window. My father returned to Flagler Beach in the 90's to retire. He died here February 9, 2000. Dad was a coach for many years and would have loved nothing more than to see his grandson play. A football and track coach, I’m not sure Dad ever actually saw a soccer game in his life. Though he loved almost all sports, I can’t help feeling he was here with us in the rain, in spirit, asking what the hell is wrong with people who do not know enough to call a game for weather when conditions suck this bad. If he weren’t already dead, such mind reeling stupidity would have probably killed him. Clearly – he should have raised me better than this – shame on him.

We played the first game of our three against St. Thomas. While we would never wish an opposing team ill, most of the Keys parents attending were quietly hoping that the cold rain was harder on the St. Thomas team than it was on our little tropical terrors. St. Thomas never gets cold. Surely this kind of weather would render them senseless, reduce them to shivering little ice cubes or at the very least, slow them down long enough for our team to smoke past them for a few goals before they warmed all the way up. Their parents were a polite little group, huddled on the steel bleachers, dressed all in matching black and gold. The bottom line, and the thing I feared most from this team was, no one flies an entire team from St. Thomas to North Florida to lose. No. This team had played together for quite awhile. They had their moves coordinated perfectly and each player knew his position by heart and played it like a pro. The Keys team was good, but with only a few weeks together to practice, they weren’t quite on the same playing level as the team from St. Thomas.

Jon scored the only goal against them in a penalty kick. The face off between Jon and the St. Thomas goalie was the first overtly expressive comment I’d heard from the parents other than a quick little yay! as each goal hit the net. I heard a parent say, “Oh he lives for these. That kid doesn’t have a chance.”

Jon’s a fine soccer player. He’s fallible. He makes mistakes. But St. Thomas’s team would need a goalie with supernatural abilities if he was going to stop a ball in a direct kick off of Jon’s foot. If it hit any part of the goalie’s body it was going to either knock that appendage off of him or knock him in the net with the ball. Better just to dive for the dirt and pray the ball doesn’t graze him. And that’s exactly what their goalie did.

We lost, but it wasn’t a shut out.

Undaunted, Jon wasn’t leaving the park until after the second game at two-thirty PM. The Key Largo under twelve girls were playing during the break between Jon’s games and he hung out to watch them play while I and everyone else stormed the local Subway shop up by I-95 and state road 100. Seriously, there were a lot of people in the mood for a Subway Sub, artistically crafted by the extremely overworked staff of the Palm Coast \ Flagler Subway. By the time I got back with Jon’s six inch meatball sub, the Key Largo girls had all but won their match. The mom’s convinced Jon to go eat in our car to get warm for a few minutes before his game. Dry was a good three hours away. Temporary warmth, though, we could manage. It was dark, gray and still drizzling rain on us.

We played Boynton at two-thirty and I must say that most of the parents were quite civilized on the sidelines. I’d like to believe that their sportsmanlike conduct was the result of sound mental health and a compassionate and intrinsic understanding of how much the parents behavior on the sidelines can affect their players on the field. The cynic in me suspected that they were just too freaking cold and wet to muster up the energy to be truly obnoxious.

Two or three of the Boynton Dads, apparently impervious to weather -- hard liquor will have that effect ... allegedly --, hooted and hollered on the sidelines, taunting the Key Largo players and coaching their own sons to do as much physical damage as possible while scoring until they had completely humiliated our team. Their wives tried valiantly to pretend that the lunatics standing too close to the field and yelling out inappropriate directions to their boys were complete strangers.

The score was six to zero. Key Largo was losing. All those hours of cold, wet running had sapped the heat out of their little bodies and they were shivering almost as hard as they were playing. I’ve been that cold and I know from experience that the brain functions slow to an amoebic ooze and no blame can be pinned on a person for making a mistake at that point. So. When one of our boys accidentally kicked a ball past our goalie and scored for Boynton, the Key Largo parents were more than sympathetic and offered encouraging praise on the player. The Boynton dads did a victory dance that nearly spilled onto the field shouting at our guys to “do it again!”

I caught the eye of one dad and smiled. “You know, we planned that.” He looked at me suspiciously. We established earlier that my son was playing for Key Largo, so he probably suspected I was pulling his leg … a sort of trip-we-meant-to-do-that kind of joke.

“Yeah. Sure.” He smiled back.

“Swear to god.” I continued to grin. “Remember the rule that anything over a six point spread loses points for the team in the lead?” Actually they start losing points at the eight point spread range, but he was a complete idiot and had no idea. My advantage.

“That’s a rule?” He shook his head as if he didn’t believe it. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Yeah. They put that in for good sportsmanship. I heard about that. For every point you go over you lose an additional point. So you score one you lose two.” Another parent offered helpfully, not correcting my spread range mis-information.

“That sucks.” The dad said.

I now had the attention of the other two dads, who had taken a break from making asses of themselves to listen in on this important information.

“Yup." I said. "Our coaches told the kids that if it looked like a shut out, if they couldn’t score on the opposing team, to start scoring on ourselves until the opposing team was in the negative range.”

“Why would they do that?” He recoiled in horror.

“Mutually assured destruction. We lose. You lose. We figure we have a shot at third or fourth if we can make the finals that way.”

“Is that legal?” Another parent asked.

“There’s nothing in the rules saying we can’t score on ourselves.” I said. “Sure, it blows away the intent of the sportsmanship rule, but we’re here to win a soccer game – by any means available.”

“Jesus Christ.” Another dad paled. “Kick the ball into the woods!! Keep it away from the Key Largo goal! Get it AWAYYYYYYY!” He shouted at his team.

The three dads started screaming out the weirdest instructions to their kids until about fifteen minutes passed and it became glaringly apparent that I was full of shit.

Key Largo scored.

It was the best fifteen minutes of the game. Our warriors go off to battle and fight an honorable fight. We on the sidelines fight a different battle, a dirty game of polite diplomacy, suspicion, and blatant disinformation. Win or lose we love our kids and hope they forgive us when they find out what we’ve done on the sidelines on their behalf when they get home. I'll feel guilt after I dry out and warm up -- then again, I'm a Republican so ... probably not.