by Dane Erbach

Acceptance

In retrospect, maybe it was better that you accepted your coaches’ decision, demeaning as it seemed back then.

After a rigorous, week-long tryout, they had just announced who had made the varsity team and who merely made JV—a benevolent way of framing their cuts, don’t you think?

But when they summoned you and a kid you called Booger to the furthest sideline, you followed them through the argyle grass, beneath that chrome-colored sky, a safe distance away from the rest of the team.

“As you know, you two made the JV team,” the head coach said, the math teacher with a calm smile whom you respected, “but we don’t see a path for you to make the varsity team.”

“Ever,” added the assistant coach with the sad mustache, the one who didn’t even teach at your school but whose wife was your PE teacher. “Not even if you practice really hard.”

And you nodded, bleach tears burning behind your eyes, said, “Okay,” because what else were you supposed to do?

Denial

“Prove them wrong,” your twin Alan told you because he’s a good brother. But at practice that next week, your coach’s words—not Alan’s—ricocheted around your skull.

During one drill, you faced off against a teammate, balanced on the balls of your feet, stabbed at the ball—and missed. He swerved around you, knocked the ball easily between two cones.

“Come on, Erbach,” shouted AJ, your team captain for three years. Suddenly he seemed like he was on another team.

During another drill, you served corner kicks as your teammates crashed into the goal box. Each time, though, you approached the ball with uncertain steps, struck it off-center, sent it curving behind the goal.

“Wow,” groaned Jeff—the coach’s favorite. He seemed so friendly until tryouts, when he lounged on the sidelines, snickered at those fighting not to be cut.

During the water break, you found your place between chalky goose turds in the spiky grass. No teammates talked to you, not even your friends.

Letting Go

It felt good to skip soccer practice. You didn’t make a big announcement to your teammates, didn’t pull your coaches aside. You simply caught a ride home after school, left your twin brother to sweat on that sunburned soccer field with AJ and Jeff and the rest of the team.

It felt better to commit to other passions—to haul a bass drum beneath the Friday Night Lights, for example, and feel your beat reverberate through the football stadium and its fans. It was your drum that thumped before each cymbal strike during the National Anthem.

Sweat dripped beneath your woolly helmet as you realized the only thing you’ll ever play on this field was a percussion instrument. You blinked it out of your eyes, deciding you’re okay with that. After all, what was the difference?

When the song ended, the other bass drummers followed your lead off the field, their shadows spinning on the turf beneath each step. Each drum’s distinct tone bounced in perfect rhythm beneath the stadium’s cicada buzz, slapped against the concrete buildings across the parking lot.

And, suddenly, you saw the difference.

Validation

You sat on a cold aluminum bench—The Fountainhead spread across your lap, too distracted to read—watching tour twin brother criss-cross the soccer field. You were seniors then, and this the last game of Alan’s last season. The sun offered no warmth behind the denim clouds.

The crowd crescendoed as the other team’s striker broke through the defense, your brother tailing him. That player shot, scored, cheered.

“Dammit!” the coach roared, calling Alan to the sideline—and your gut remembered what that meant because you had been there before. He cussed your brother out, stuck him on the bench for the rest of the game. But you knew it wasn’t Alan’s man that scored the goal—it was Jeff’s; Alan couldn’t catch up because he had been marking his own player.

The coach apologized when he realized his mistake, but the game was over, the season. The coach had now stolen something from your brother too, and you knew it couldn’t end any other way.

Growth

Years later, your dad treated you—a dad yourself, and a high school teacher—to Wendy’s after installing some laminate flooring in your new house. While waiting for your Baconator, mesmerized by the din of beeping fryers and sizzling griddles, you spotted your former soccer coaches—older, thinner, with shaggier hair and sadder mustaches.

Your Diet Coke sweated in your hand as you thought through everything you could and should tell them—a hypothetical letter you’d drafted a decade earlier. When I became a teacher, you wanted to tell them, I made a promise to never treat my students the way you treated me, my brother.

But your resentment no longer fit the way it used to, so you followed the dominoes back to everything you did instead of suffering through soccer practice: marching band, of course, but also orchestra and your punk-rock band, countless Boy Scout campouts, experiences that kindled independence and persistence, creativity, a desire to lead and help and nurture.

And you wondered: if you had stuck with soccer, would you have even become a teacher?

Someone called your name, handed you a grease-spotted bag, and you left Wendy’s without saying anything—good or bad—to your former coaches. After all, they were the ones who taught you to save your strength for weight you can actually move.

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash