Going Slumming or Doing Right by My Son?

Dear friends, old and new, 

I want to pick your brain on something. With that said I won’t be mad if you don’t reply. There are only so many hours in a day – and man I do know how they fly!!!

I’m also not so ignorant as to expect you to speak for anybody but yourself. You aren’t representing a race, a class, a gender, a Mom,  you’re representing all of those things and none of those things – mainly you’re representing you – a person I respect.

 As you probably know, my son plays travel soccer.  He’s good. Darn good.  Definitely among the top 5% or even 2% I’ve seen – and I’ve seen a lot. He’s got the stuff you can’t teach – he can fly.

The travel soccer world is white – lily white. It’s like the Suburban parents couldn’t stand seeing their kids getting beat out by minority children in sports like football and basketball so they decided to make high-level soccer as out of reach for the poor and lower-middle class as possible. There’s a simple reason why the US Men’s national team will never be among the world’s best – a significant amount of kids just don’t have access to the sport. (I won’t get into why the women’s team CAN be elite – but for now just keep it at the women’s landscape is a lot different and tailor made for the US. There’s no equivalent of NCAA soccer for women for other countries).

I coach my son’s team. I still don’t know how it came to be – except they needed someone.  I’m not a great coach – I’m always blown away at how little I know – but I am getting better. Still – I don’t feel qualified to be coaching the more talented kids on the team – including my son. They deserve someone with more knowledge.

We do OK. We win more than we lose. I’d say if there are three classes of teams in terms of ability we are in the upper-second tier. I don’t know if I have the know-how to get them to the highest tier. To sum it up – we get by on being a very athletic team and we have a couple of very good players. Skill wise – we lag – and that’s partly on me. I’m not trying to shirk responsibility but most of the kids learned bad fundamentals and are pretty stubborn about relearning how to do it the right way.

The kids on my team are good kids. I like them and care about them – they’re going to go on to be great men long after their soccer days are over.  I also like their parents. I’ve made a lot of good friends through this.

And yet ...

There’s a club in Allentown. For those of you who don’t know Allentown is the poorest city in our area – and one of the poorest in the state. A lot of kids in their club have cleats donated from other programs.  Up until this season they wore plain cotton t-shirts instead of the expensive jerseys of other teams (I believe a business bought their kids some jerseys).  A lot of the parents don’t speak English – and when one of their kids foul another player you hear a lot of grumbling about how” dirty” they play in Allentown – it’s crap – the “dirtiest” teams I’ve seen are the slow white teams who push because they can’t keep up.

They have all races represented.  Their coach is a strong black man who I’ve always seen carry himself with class. The type of man I was told to make sure I had around when I adopted Jojo.

A big part of me wants my son to play there.

It would mean a lot more commuting to practice – but that’s because where I practice now is so incredibly close.  It would mean removing my son from a team he knows well. It would mean Mary and I getting away from some great people. It might even mean some people feeling betrayed because I left them.

Not surprisingly, my son’s best friends in school are bi-racial. It’s almost like an immediate bond forms. I’m not sure who he considers his “best” friend now or if he even has a ranking system – but not  long ago his best friend was another bi-racial boy named Dashawn.  Dashawn is everything Jojo isn’t. He’s not an  athlete, he has a horrible time making friends because he tries so hard, he gets in trouble in school, not many people have much good to say about him. But Jojo has his back – he’s not going to end the friendship – it’s like they have a bond that is unbreakable.

I’ve never gotten the impression Jojo’s ever been excluded by white kids – his teammates all embrace him and the parents have always been good to him.  But he can play. I don’t think for a second that racism would take over if he couldn’t play – but sometimes I wonder if Jojo feels that way.  It’s an odd thing I really can’t describe – it’s like he doesn’t fully trust them. A part of him seems to wonder “what would you guys think of me if I couldn’t score?” He knows Dashawn doesn’t care – he knows his other minority friends don’t care.

While there are three other minorities on the team (two are Indian), there’s an economic gap between him and the rest of the team.  We do OK – we certainly aren’t anywhere near the poverty line – but nobody else on the team lives on “our” side of town.  I can’t afford team pictures all the time, we don’t have a $200 team bag.

I asked Jojo how he’d feel about playing for another team – and he didn’t hesitate to say that he was fine with it. Mary opined that Jojo would be up for whatever I suggested – and maybe she’s right. But I don’t think it’s that simple. He’s played with some of these kids since he was 5 years old. I gave him every opportunity – almost begged him – to say he’d be really sad to leave this team and his friends. I got no such indication. It’s almost like he wants to play somewhere else.

Jojo is a lot of things but “deep” isn’t one of them. He doesn’t know what day it is some of the time. It’s not that he’s stupid, he just doesn’t give a shit. He gets up in the morning and rolls with whatever the day brings him.

 But lately I’m starting to realize by things he says and does that he’s taking in a lot more than he lets on. I have to wonder if he’s starting to feel that as nice as his teammates are to him, that he really isn’t one of them. I don't know how he sees the world - I don' t know what it's like to be a minority. 

There are four middle schools in our district. Two are in the nicer box house areas, the one that Jojo goes to is in the middle class area but also takes kids from one of the areas biggest projects, and one is almost exclusively poor. Our team breakdown of schools: 75% go to the “better” Middle schools, 14% go to VERY expensive private schools, and Jojo and one other go to the lower/Middle-class school. The other kid’s house is on the market.  None go to the poor school.  Bethlehem only has one travel team – it’s hard to believe the talent is so skewed to one side of town. There is one elite academy team in the area and several Bethlehem kids are on it. Trust me when I say they aren’t raiding kids from Bethlehem’s South side either.

I don’t get it but I can’t escape it.  I want my kid to go to a poorer team – to a team where all the kids live in neighborhoods most people try to avoid. I want my kid to play on a team where they love just having a uniform and being part of something. . I want my son to play for someone who isn’t me – I want my son to have a black head coach.  I don’t know how to explain that to parents – many of which took a big chance on me when they had their kids sign on to play with us.  I consider many of these people friends – I like their kids. It doesn’t make sense to want to leave.  But it doesn’t make sense that Jojo is seemingly indifferent to leaving. He’s familiar with the Allentown team – we’ve played them a couple of times. They are about equal to us in terms of talent – they’ll be better than us with Jojo.

Is this about him or about me? Am I trying to carry on my little vendetta against what I think is a horrible system of US soccer? While Mary and I aren’t rolling in dough – we aren’t poor. We can afford cleats and the multiple tournament fees and camps that playing at this level requires. I don’t want this to be some kitchy thing I do to prove a point – another one of my bipolar benders I will regret in 3 months.

So I need validation – or I need a reality check.  Is it bigoted because I am tired of my son being on a team made up almost exclusively of rich white kids? Is it bigoted to choose one team because of the race of the coaching staff?

For some reason this decision is weighing on me – more than it should. Feel free to comment or PM me.