Kevin Coffey's TALES OF THE UNEMPLOYED: Lessons Learned from Emerald Cheetahs
(A Youth Soccer Team)
(Narrated by Kevin Coffey)
One thing I’ve done to combat the numbness of unemployment: I volunteered to coach my son’s youth soccer team. We’re called the Emerald Cheetahs.
Don’t ask.
I would love to tell you how I’m a tactical coaching genius who inspires mesmerizing play of the beautiful game we call soccer at elite levels.
Alas, I’m just the parental figurehead of a swirling, energized bunch of seven-year-old boys chasing after an elusive bouncing ball, shouting instructions so they don’t cluster up too tightly like a bunch of marauding roosters.
During practices, I’ve learned the hard way I have exactly eight seconds to get my commands across in an effective way and blow my whistle to begin, or Lord of the Flies II breaks out in the back field with epic games of tag ending in below the belt kicks. Or, my personal favorite: farting chirps, usually isolated at first, quickly building into an eerie, yet equally impressive group chant of mass flatulence like a tribe of Neanderthals that learned to scare off predators by making offensive bodily noises.
Frustrating sometimes? Sure. But I’m learning that coaching youth soccer is the ultimate practice in maintaining one’s personal Zen. A secret weapon for the unemployed soul. Don’t get too high, don’t get too low. Keep everything ultra-positive.
We’re in a “who cares about the score/don’t worry about the record” league, so a board of directors isn’t picking apart my tactical decisions. The press isn’t eating my lunch each week, either. And the parents have been supportive and positive with me.
At least, all that was true before our disastrous first game.
I’m lucky to be in Texas where Texans know everything about American football (the true religion here), baseball, and, well…. In my experience, all the other sports fall way down the care spectrum after that. Soccer is on its way to major prominence in this country, especially with the next World Cup coming here in 2026. Yet, deep in the heart of Texas….
Parents are generally heads down, eyeballs glued to their phones during practice. When we do make eye contact, they smile at me like I’m a foreign language teacher who barely speaks English but seems to be doing a good enough job with this “soccer thing” involving their child.
That said, I, too, have discovered it’s amazing how little of my favorite sport I actually know.
I’ll say my ego got a studs-up sliding tackle when I asked the team as a group during the first practice, “What’s a goal kick?” One feisty personality in a husky frame proceeded to give the team an impromptu Ted Talk on what a goal kick was and wasn’t. Then the Talk turned metaphysical, drifting into homages to Minecraft and Mario cheat tips. As fascinating as it was, after three continuous minutes, I had to interrupt him or we’d never finish our first practice.
Then, I realized I had no idea how the hell to tell them in simple terms what a goal kick was. For me it was straightforward: ball sails out of bounds over the end-line, and, depending on which team touches it out of bounds, it’s either a goal kick or corner kick. Simple, right?
Nope. Coaching concepts of play like kickoffs, corner-kicks, throw-ins, and free kicks to young boys just learning the game in a four-on-four league with no goalies, a choppy field to play on (the size of an elongated phone booth riddled with potholes and fire ant mounds) had become a bit overwhelming.
So, let’s just say my first practice felt like it fell a teensy bit short.
Then I got the proof—and then some. Game one arrived.
The other team ran roughshod over us, carving us up from the first kickoff like they were paid professionals and we were amateurs giving them a tune up. It was a painful forty minutes. I got so numb, the theme from Platoon started playing on repeat inside my befuddled head.
We’re not supposed to keep score, but the snarky teenager reffing our game came up to me after he blew the final whistle. With a smirk on his face, he said, “Your team: 1, theirs: 15.”
At least it wasn’t a shutout.
The parents who had been enthusiastically piping in with questions and so supportive all week bailed on me. Literally. After spending less than five minutes packing up my gear, I looked up and the field was deserted.
Needless to say, we Emerald Cheetahs spent the next practice working on the basics. Who stands where? Where can you pass the ball? Who is my teammate? No, you can’t pick up the ball and run with it. How do you know which goal is yours?
Often times for me, coaching youth soccer is like trying to tell the town drunk how to get home. “No, you go that way. Please don’t lie down on the field. Please keep your hands off others. Yes, that way. No, you’ve turned around again. Please don’t make your water bottle ‘pee’ on your teammates. No—go the other way!”
If we’d had a board of directors, they would have happily “sacked” me (the term they use in Europe for firing coaches) after my first game. But I was just a hapless father, either plain stupid or big enough of a sucker to volunteer to coach, alone. SO alone.
Game two.
We got back a couple of kids who hadn’t played that I thought might be a positive. I started feeling energized again. It was a beautiful sunny day, but with a slight chill to the air—perfect soccer weather. A new day for the Emerald Cheetahs, I thought.
Then the entire roster of the opposing team we were about to play showed up early and began warming up with the fighting spirit and organization of Japanese samurai.
Mouth agape, I watched our opponents execute crisp passing drills in unison, effortlessly migrating in and out complex crossing formations at their coaches’ instruction (there were TWO of them). Our opponents chanted things together that sounded coordinated and intimidating.
We’re going to get annihilated, I thought in a panic.
My response for our warm up? I had my players pass the ball to me, run at the empty goal, and I’d pass it back to them; they easily scored. Yea, Cheetahs.
When I made eye contact with the parents this time, they weren’t looking at their phones anymore. They were staring holes…through me. Their thoughts were clear. Like, why aren’t YOU doing more of the stuff THEY’RE doing?
I wanted to shuffle off the field sideways Wile E. Coyote style and disappear for, say, the rest of the season. But I would never do that to my son, as I had to be an example of how to proceed in the face of adversity. In this case, great adversity.
So, I took a deep breath, and a sane voice filled my head: Just make sure they all play, everyone gets equal time, keep encouraging them, and remain calm regardless of the outcome. Remember: they need your guidance.
The merciless whistle blew to start the game. I think I blacked out for the first two minutes, ready to cringe and duck from parents who might start launching their folding chairs and concrete-like Yeti thermos’ at me once the game surely went south.
And then?
The stuff we had worked on in practice had actually stuck! They had paid attention. In the early moments of the game, the Cheetahs had It. We took It to them.
I went from reciting one of Sylvia Plath’s poems about alienation and self-destruction to revving up like one of the trainers in Rocky Balboa’s corner.
The opposition couldn’t move on us. We had ALL the possession. We lived on their side of the field. All I needed to yell were obvious shots of encouragement that even a monkey could see: “Attack! Charge! Good try! Yes! Keep doing that!”
Then the goals came. Lots of them. For us. After the first goal I felt like I was Adam touched by God’s finger in Michaelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. What couldn’t we achieve?
The magical first quarter ended. (Yes, we play four quarters at this level, not halves.)
The Emerald Cheetahs were giddy. And the truth again: it was all them. I was just the parental unit volunteer, that’s it. But during the game—this game—they were listening to me!
I resisted the urge to keep playing the best players and kept to my promise of subbing, making sure all of the boys got equal playing time. And I did it all at once, four fresh boys coming on for the ones that had done so well.
And you know what? We elevated to yet another level.
I began to feel for my—ahem—opposing coaches. They began countering any changes I made. When I subbed, they subbed. These supposed samurai, performers of the most beautiful—and intimidating—pre-game ritual I’d ever witnessed were as hapless as we had been in our first game. Well…almost.
Some of their players began kicking at the dirt and had watery eyes. So I stopped shouting instructions for most of the rest of the game and let my team play free of coach. Only when they got lost on where to be, where to go—still more often than I’d like—did I give them gentle verbal instructions.
Instead, I worked hard on trying not to appear so dementedly gleeful on the sidelines.
The game ended. This teenage referee didn’t offer me the score even though it wouldn’t have stung. It didn’t matter. To the Emerald Cheetah’s credit, they were quickly over this game just like they had been over our abysmal first week outing. They were too young for the result to define the rest of their day or even their weekend. The “bounce-back” optimism of children regardless of circumstance is an incredible thing.
After the game, the parents looked at me as if, in an incredible turnabout, I’d been possessed by Sir Alex Ferguson, the legendary manager of English Premier side Manchester United. Parents stuck around to praise me, and there were lots of handshakes, high-fives, and overall good vibes.
I mostly deferred to the kids, giving them all the credit—making sure to praise them all individually.
Since then, I couldn’t tell you the scores, but I’m pretty sure we’re undefeated and have gotten to the point where opposing coaches have tried implementing in-game tactics I’ve never head of: “No throw-ins, only kick-ins!” And: “They can’t charge off the midfield line during kickoff until the ball does these consecutive things in order!” Huh?
Anywho, that’s life. Sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down (like 15-1 down!)
So the Emerald Cheetahs have taught this unemployed fellow these things: Sub without bias—allow everyone to participate equally. Be patient. Over-praise and never scold. And more than once in while, let the kids play the game on their own terms.
Why?
Because, in my experience, how to face the chaos of life is a lesson best learned from children.
Excellent message!
another hilarious adventure!!