Today I want to share with you all one of my favorite childhood memories that has been on my mind all day. I know that this is a bit off of my normal (if that is a word that can be used for this blog) subjects, but there is a point to it. I’ll explain at the end.
I think I was twelve or thirteen when the local Boys & Girls Club that I played soccer with decided to put together a “select” All Valley team to send to an international soccer tournament in Spokane Washington. Somehow I was selected to be a part of this team. It was one of the proudest moments of my life. Then, add to that, we all got matching shirts with numbers and socks. We were the best of valley’s female soccer players at the time, pulled from teams that had spent the season in heated competition with one another. Now we had just a few short weeks to become a team. I remember feeling pretty confident of our chances at making a good showing at this tournament…
…until the coach (who didn’t really know much about soccer or teenagers) informed us of the name she had given our team. She figured we all lived in the Lewis-Clark Valley and we were all girls so our name was really right in front of our faces.
Yes, you guessed it; she named us the Valley Girls.
Keep in mind that this was the mid 1980’s when the term “Valley Girl” immediately brought to mind the quote - “Like, Gag me with a spoon” and other such nonsense. But we decided to run with it since we really had no choice in the matter anyway.
The weekend of the big tournament arrived and we marched out onto the field in our matching tees and socks to find teams with matching duffel bags, soccer balls, flags, etc. Their warm ups were unified and synchronized to marching chants most often heard in military boot camps. Even the pony tail holders they used matched the rest of their uniforms.
Okay, so those teams had more money than our little group from a small community of loggers and mill workers. So what? We were still the best the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley Boys & Girls Club had to offer. We would show these teams that money wasn’t everything. The Valley Girls were there to make a statement.
Our first game was against the Shin Breakers.
Do I even need to tell you all how well that game went?
We were hopelessly out of our league. There was absolutely no way we were going to win anything in this tournament. Heck we were lucky to score the one goal that we did all weekend. I think that was on account of the weather. Lewiston sports teams got used to playing in the rain and hail. If we ran inside every time the weather got a little chancy we’d never get an opportunity to play. So the rain and hail during that last game didn’t faze any of us much. It just made it a little harder to see the ball or the boundary lines.
The point to all of this is that throughout the weekend, in spite of the fact that we were playing teams that had obviously played together for many years and had a ton more experience than we did, our little makeshift group of girls never gave up. We kept fighting to the bitter end even though we knew we would be going home in last place.
We didn’t win the tournament, but we never gave up on ourselves.
This is something that I’ve forgotten about in recent years. I let that competitive spirit wither away as I hid in the shadows and watched life go by. I convinced myself that I was too scared, too shy, and too old to get out there and try anything new. I made myself believe that I could be happy just watching from the sidelines as others played the game.
Not anymore. That drive, that competitive spirit in me wasn’t completely dead. Somewhere along the line it jumped off life support and grew strong again. It’s not yet as strong as it once was since it has to constantly do battle with the spirit that gave up in the first place but it is getting there.
It’s time to stop watching from the sidelines and get back in the game. Win or lose, here I come.
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