Divided Loyalties

Recently, I've had the opportunity to experience sitting on the 50 yard line, or mid field as it is called on the soccer field, to see my son play soccer against the soccer team from the high school where I graduated. The east side of the field was my Alma mater high school, and the west side was where my oldest son was currently going to high school, buy also where most of my high school friends went from grade school, and I attended this same high school for freshman year.

It was a bit tricky going past all the Roosevelt parents to go sit in the Dowling section, but I managed. As it turned out, I was in for a special treat, having to sit through two games before my son's team played. I had time to wax nostalgic about the good old days when not only wasn't soccer a recognised sport in high school (33 years ago), but Roosevelt had a soccer club, that only played other high schools that also were elite enough to have soccer clubs. Roosevelt was the best of the clubs in the city at that time, and I was a soccer groupy.

Since the first game with freshman ended in a tie, and I had to wait till the third game for my son's sophomore team to play, I decided that I would secretly and silently cheer on the Roosevelt varsity team to win, thereby not totally dissing loyalty to my son, and I could still keep some loyalty to myself.

It was a tight game and both teams were well matched, but Roosevelt's players were more diverse and experienced- probably due to the foreign exchange students that played for Roosevelt. Dowling was lacking in both experience and foreign exchange students on the soccer team. Tension mounted on the field, and the play got rougher, which made the crowd more mouthy from both schools. Dowling's whole motto is about school pride, and they weren't about to let Roosevelt get the better of them. Parents began shouting out calls that the ref 'missed' on both sides of the field. There were more than a couple of tackles, lots of trips and fists nearly flew as the game progressed. The ref didn't call any unnecessary roughness for either team until the last 10 minutes of play in a hour and a half long soccer match. By the time the ref yellow-carded one player from each team for 'roughness', it was already too late. There had been a lot of shoving, pushing and hitting going on the entire game to start carding players in the last 10 minutes.

The score reflected how closely matched both teams were as the end neared with Roosevelt in the lead by one point. As the clock ticked down to seconds, Dowling made several long shots that seemed a bit desperate, but missed their mark. Roosevelt won a hard fought battle, much to the Dowling parents' chagrin, and the clock ran out. Both teams players looked played out, marked with grass stains, dirt and bruises from a physical and challenging game.

During this entire game, I heard people yell out what they thought they saw, and many times it was revealed to me that what they saw was riddled with bias toward their own team. This is not a new discovery to me, but at that time I was trying to ride the 50 yard line with my loyalties divided as well, it brought extreme clarity to the situation. I began to see how the Dowling parents might think there should have been a hand ball called and at the same time I noticed that the Roosevelt players had some definite gripes against Dowling players. It was amazing to me to be able to be neutral and still have loyalties to both teams. It was like 20/20 reality time!

Occasionally, I would cheer on my Alma mater when the Dowling parents were cheering "Get the ball!"- after all, they didn't know who's team I was secretly cheering for! It was adventurous and fun to be appearing to cheer for one team when actually I was cheering for the other team! Yet I felt fickle for doing it in public.

I couldn't help myself by comparing this extraordinary viewpoint to real life and the clarity of seeing both sides of every situation could provide. Imagine how fair life could be?

Then the thought occurred to me that what if people would exercise this rare gift in politics, religion and maybe even sports?!? What if people were required to look at both sides of everyday life and interactions? Would there be less misunderstandings and less fights?

Ryan won his game against Roosevelt, and it was a spirited and well matched game as well. But the sophomore team was much less physical and more strategies from both Dowling and Roosevelt players. This game went the entire game matched point for point until the very end, when Dowling came out ahead with a header for the winning point in the last seconds. It was exciting and exhilarating, and the parents stayed engaged as they had for the previous game.
Ryan got to play nearly an entire half of the game which made him happy.

So the soccer match ended with a tie for frosh, a win for Dowling sophs, and a win for Roosevelt varsity- how much more fair could life be?

20/20