Week 29: Futbol!

The Saturday before the World Cup began I stand on the sidelines to watch Todd Shelly score the winning goal for his travel soccer team in Portage, MI.

Kathy and I find the game at the Portage Soccer Club, about 25 miles from Todd's home in Marcellus, and almost at the end of nine nearly new pitches. It is the only game going that cloudy Saturday afternoon. Todd's parents, Kim and Mark, are well prepared with soccer chairs and umbrellas. And Todd’s team is a joy to watch, the thirteen year old boys to young men, some seeming twice the height of others, passed the ball beautifully to one another. On a corner kick near the end of the game, Todd, a defenseman, backs up his forwards and stops a ball the opposing team ricocheted twenty yards back away from the net. Todd turns and kicks in one motion. GOOOOOOAAAAALLLLLL!

And I ponder...Soccer: a rural/global game.

Images over the last months –

DECEMBER
We walk down a dusty path away from one of the ancient temples of Cambodia and by a small village. A group of men, young to old, were kicking the ball from one end of a small dirt field to the other. They turn to look at these foreigners watching their end of the day game. They smile. A naked toddler walks into a garden adjoining the soccer yard. My son greets an old man in Khmer. We smile. The game goes on.

JANUARY
We mourn the death of Bryan, captain of the Marcellus High School soccer team. It was his team jersey that helped the police to identify him. In this little Michigan village, no one is left untouched by this athlete, dying young. We remember the grace of his movement, his passion to play better, harder.

FEBRUARY
I walk home from the Christian Church (evangelical/Pentecostal) of La Flor, Costa Rica, the third Sunday of Lent. It is noon. The fog has settled in. I cannot see more than twenty yards in front of my face. There are no more mountains. But two local futbol teams are gathering on the field across from the Catholic church. I can barely see the goal from the road above the field. As I eat the noon meal at Finca la Flor I hear shouts and horns from the game, the sound coming clearly through the fog. How can they play without seeing?

MARCH
It is the first weekend of Semana Santa – Holy Week. The local junta (village leaders) for San Luis, Costa Rica, has been planning a weekend fund raiser for months that will include food, dancing, electric bull riding and a soccer tournament on Sunday. Only in the last two weeks did they realize that this soccer tournament on the perfectly groomed and green field (in a dry, dry land) right next to the church, would take place on Palm Sunday. San Luis is the champion of the area teams. On Palm Sunday they lost, but the fun on the sidelines did not seem dimmed. The church was empty by then.

The following wMonday Geovanny, my host dad, and his thirteen year old son, Danny, join the area men up the mountain at Finca la Catarata. They drink Aguilas and watch Saprisa play Alajuela on the TV. The elevation there allows reception. The game is replayed over rice and beans and fresh tortillas for breakfast on Tuesday.

APRIL
We fly in a twenty seat plane low over the hills and mountains of southwestern Costa Rica. The roads wind and twist through valleys, over mountains, amid villages. There are small farms scattered, coffee trees on terraces. There may be twenty farms in any one view, but in each nook there is a bright green futbol field next to the church at the center of the village.

MAY
Back home in Michigan, Millers and Nofsingers have ESPN so there will be open doors for watching the World Cup together. Ian works on an independent study: sixteen radio programs that will preview the World Cup on the Goshen College radio station. We anticipate a great excuse to get together, driving as much as thirty miles to watch the games with Florence friends, to hang out, yell, drink beer, and learn from the real soccer fans among us.

JUNE
I Google "vibrant rural soccer" and read the blog for The Transcape Soccer Challenge 2010.

An AIDS awareness group is traveling across South Africa in their own rural football tournament. They will play on all kinds of pitches, give the world a peek, and engage conversation about AIDS. Meanwhile people will fly in from all over the globe, including Martha’s son, wife and twin grandchildren, to watch World Cup Soccer.

For a few weeks there is global community, and the hard feelings and poor calls, while they may be remembered for years, will not cause wars or famine.

Maybe this is why the apostle Paul was also intrigued with sports and imaged the church entering into the hoopla:

"Run with perseverance the race -- the match -- that is set before you, looking to Jesus, the forerunner..." Hebrews 12:2