Opinion Many winners

Our team got hammered. It was the last game of the season, the sort-of playoffs you have when your soccer team is made up of eight- and nine-year-olds.

We had a couple good runs down the field, a few chances to score on corner kicks, but couldn't put the ball in the net. We were outplayed.

Daughter Sabrina was bummed out. Her sister K.C. was not nearly as devastated. Sabrina sat in the hallway, her back against the wall, more than an hour after the game was over.

At first, she wanted to say that it was unfair, that whenever we had the ball, they came up and kicked it out of bounds. She and I talked a little bit about strategy and the rules. Then she said that they had some boys on their team who were really good. So did we, I said, and our girls were as good as theirs.

"Losing sucks," I finally shared with her. "It really sucks." Admitting this seemed to make her feel better, less alone in her disappointment. "But they played really well and so did you."

Confessing to my daughter that I thought their coach had done a better job was hard. I coached our team. I told her maybe I had not given our goalies enough training, not worked hard enough on having our defenders come up and keep the ball in their half.

She looked at at me. She was perplexed. I was coach. I was Dad. I had just said I could have done better, that this might have been my fault, not theirs. Whoa.

But if she was disappointed, I was more so. If only it had been a tight game, I would not have minded losing. But a blowout? I had let the kids down.

Slowly, though, the reason I am soccer coach began to bubble up through the fog. Teaching children. Getting them outside, rain or shine. Watching them get better at a wonderful game.

Another realization took a bit longer. As we walked down the sideline giving the other team high fives, I looked at the winners and saw Brennan, Maclayne, Lauren and others who had been on our team last year, or the year before.

I had been their coach. I had been part of their soccer. We had learned some basics together and in some ways, I was as proud of them on this wonderful afternoon as their own coach, who had certainly better prepared his team.

Suddenly I had a better understanding of what it means to live in a small town, where we are community. Kids on our team this year will be on their team next. They're our kids, one and all.

It isn't about their team versus our team. It is about the children, individuals and together. It's about us.