Hand out Gatorade Gels fifteen minutes before kick-off and look forward to the immediate impact on my players. I don’t have to wait long. The game starts and one of my midfielders starts running around waving his arms in the air, like his hair is on fire. It kind of is. He’s being pursued by bees. Why him and not all the other kids? Well, turns out that rather than drink the gel, he smeared it on his head.
‘I just wanted a Mohawk,’ says the boy wonder, now sobbing from beneath the tracksuit top I’ve placed on his dripping mop to ward off the stingers.
His mother puts down the Jodi Picoult novel she’s reading (can’t be sure but from the cover I’m thinking it was the one where somebody learns a moral lesson) when she should be watching the action, and starts berating me.
‘What did you do to him?’ she shouts.
‘I did nothing,’ I reply. ‘Your genius son is the one at fault here. I gave him energy gel and he put it on his hair.’
‘Were there instructions on the gel packet?’ she asks, like a lawyer already preparing a ludicrous defense of a particularly hapless client.
‘Instructions? No, I think they just expect a basic level of intelligence from people who use them.’
‘There’s no need to be like that,’ she says as she starts to lead the brainiac back to her car.
‘There’s every need to be like that,’ I roar after her. 'Where are you bringing him now? Straight to Harvard?'
We win the game 3-0 but that’s not the most important thing I gain today. I jot down a note at the final whistle. Commandment of Travel Team Soccer Number 53: At try-outs, get all prospective players to take IQ tests. It’s no fun working with dummies.
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