Stillwater High School Soccer.

Few organizations can boast such a fruitless, ineffectual record of utter failure and disaster.  I present to you a collection of approximately 25 young men in Stillwater, Oklahoma that trained diligently under professional coaching yet could not have executed the World Game more poorly if we were playing on a mud slide of yak feces with waffle irons tied to our feet.  I am simultaneously horribly ashamed and strangely proud of my participation of this endeavor in 1994 and 1995.

I started playing soccer for the first time when I was 16 years old.  Well, that’s not exactly true.  I had played once before.  I played for one season in third grade, also in Stillwater.  We played with girls.  I was a fullback, which at that age meant I could not cross into the offensive half of the field.  I wore the same pair of camo-themed sweat pants to every game, never washed once and covered in dog hair.  My only notable contributions was at least one throw-in violation per game and the game where I kicked the ball off of the same girl five times in a row.

After third grade, we moved out of Oklahoma to Seaside, California.  In Oklahoma, I had lived with my grandma and without her around there was no one to take me to soccer or little league baseball.  Neither of my parents were that interested in extracurricular activities, other than the popular game that my dad invented, called “Shut The Hell Up Or I’ll Break My Foot Off In Your Ass”.

Based on this evidence, I think its fair to say that I was starting soccer with no prior ability.  To make matters worse, not only was I new to proper football, but I was new to sports completely.  I was raw, untapped athletic potential.  In movie-land this means that I might be able to throw a football 80 yards or run the 40 yard dash in 4.2 seconds … in the real world, it meant that I was a slow, out of shape pussy.  To that point, my only activities included an encyclopedic knowledge of action figures (majoring GI Joe & He-Man with a minor in Transformers) and Sega’s Altered Beast.

You might be asking yourself, ‘why subject yourself to such humiliation by joining a sport so late in life?’  Good question.  When I got to high school, I was accepted into the smart, witty group of friends.  Well, accepted may not be the best word … I forced my way in.  Yeah, that sounds better.  Every year had this same group.  When I first entered Stillwater High School, the cool senior group was Robert Wittwer, Travis Graalman, and the rest of the PIMPS.  All of us were immediately overwhelmed with stars in our eyes and hero worship.  They performed funny skits at half-time during basketball and football games.  They entertained during the school talent show and prep rallies.  And they played soccer.

The PIMPS were my blue print for coolness, fame, and … girls.

My junior year in high school, I was determined to carry out my Single White Female obsession.  I would become Robert Wittwer, Jr.  Soccer beckoned.  To bolster my courage, my classmate and good buddy Mr. Mike Moore was a rising star on the team, sweeper/stopper.  He was also a varsity wrestler, which meant he was the sole ass whupper on the entire squad.  Also on the roster were members of our gang, Sinbad and Kyle (with the magically removable shoulder).

I recruited everyone in our group to join me in my quest – Chrispy (midfielder), Johnnie (striker), and Simpy (goalie).  None of us had played soccer, so it would be a fair entry into this undiscovered country.  We started with summer Club soccer, a big step below Classic.  We lost every one of our matches by an average margin of 4 goals. I actually thought that this was a respectable margin of losing until Sinbad told me that most soccer games are decided by a single goal.  Shit.

In my first game, I was nutmegged and Braziled by the same asshole striker with the faux neck beard who thought it would be funny to pick on the newbie hiding at left back.  I sometimes have dreams that I run across this jerk-off nowadays and greet him with a double footed slide tackle targeting his groinal region.

During our car rides to the goat pastures that served as our soccer pitches, we toyed with the idea of adopting a team name.  Notable ideas were the Stillwater Defense, Stillwater Divided, the Stillwater Defeated, or the Stillwater Hindenburgs.  Oh, the humanity.

Despite our losses, most of us were encouraged by our progress.  We were slowly picking up the basics of the game, passing and trapping, running and jogging, the whole shabang.  Our defensive tactic was a clever one … do anything to get the ball from the striker and then kick it 50 yards out of bounds.  Repeat for 90 minutes.

I say most of us were encouraged, but not the guys that played the year before.  You see they knew that Club soccer is where the morons and suck-asses plied their trade.  We were playing against the Junior Varsity of 3A schools all over eastern Oklahoma.  The real soccer players that we would be facing during high school competition were playing Classic soccer.

Our first year of high school soccer we had a new coach, Trevor Fieldson.  His only qualifications to coach proper football was that 1) he was British, 2) he was the Junior High shop teacher, and 3) he was a ridiculous long distance runner.  Sounds perfect.  We ran our suicides, did our 3v1 possession drills, scrimmaged, worked on set pieces, etc.  One of our notable lessons from Mr. Fieldson was when he encouraged us to grab the testicles of our opponent during a tackle.  I shit you not.  Our first game loomed and I was filled with false courage.

One thing to note is that Stillwater is a small 6A school.  6A is the highest designation in high school athletics in Oklahoma.  We had 1200 total students, whereas Union, Jenks, Edmond, and Broken Arrow boasted twice, three times, and even four times that number.  Even our legitimate athletes struggled against the big boys and big dollars.  The collection of National Honors Society and video game enthusiasts that composed our roster were doomed.

To illustrate the shit storm that was the 1994 season let me just tell you one story.  After the season was over and the damage was done to our psyches, Josh Holliday, one of the year book editors, found me to confirm some of the details of our performance for the article he was forced to write on our season.  Josh Holliday, starting QB of the Stillwater Pioneers.  Josh Holliday, later drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays into the Major Leagues.  Josh Holliday, older brother of Matt Holliday, all-star outfielder for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Here’s our conversation:

Josh: “Hey, I was looking at your record and it says that you guys gave up 108 goals in 12 games.  Is that right?”

Me: “Um … yeah.  It was a tough year.”

Josh: “It says that you guys scored one goal.  Is that right?  One damn goal?”

Me: “Yeah, that’s true.  And in fact, it was a penalty kick.  George even missed it on the first attempt, but the goalie jumped early so he got to re-take it.”

At this point, Josh looked as if I had just tongue-kissed his house cat.  He turned and walked away with an expletive laden rant about the suckitude of our athletic abilities.  I guess I could have been offended, but nothing he said came close to the vitriol that we, ourselves, said about our own performances on the bus rides home.

The title of the article that he wrote for us?  “Denied.”  Those are some golden memories that I’ll cherish forever.  Thanks, Josh!

My first year of SHS soccer was the worst year on record for Stillwater High School.  I doubt even the special education schools compiled a worse goal differential than we did. The one thing was that we had the highest cumulative GPA of any team in the state, probably of any sport in fact.  So there!  In YOUR face!

Even our vaunted Golden Generation of Andy Huss (aka Stillwater Pele) in 1992, only managed a .500 record.  Fuck, I would have killed for a 6-6 record.  Our futility was not limited to just the boys, either.  Quite the opposite.  The girls’ team set such historic lows that the state of Oklahoma adopted a mercy rule for the first time in organized soccer.  This was after a 25-1 obliteration.  Again, a penalty kick.

Next year was a little better for the team.  We scored three goals and cut our differential by a full two-thirds.  I think we tied a game, but still no wins.  My lack of athletic experience reared its ugly head.  As a senior, I was captain of the JV while all of the others that I recruited made the varsity squad.  Fuck.  Mr. Fieldson, testicle grabbing Brit that he was, still let me get a varsity letter on graduation.  I’m still not sure that it’s something I should thank him for.

In the years that have passed, whenever I encounter another soccer player from the state of Oklahoma, I know that I have endure the ridicule of the Stillwater legacy without retort or remark.  Just as if I pissed my pants while dancing at a night club.  108-1.  Honestly, what could I say back?

So if you see me at Faulkner Park running my son into the dirt at the age of three with shooting drills, dribbling around cones, and barking marking assignments … its just me trying to score one goal against the demons of Stillwater soccer that still haunt me to this day.

I may have to pass on teaching the whole gonad grabbing thing, though.