Thinking a lot about soccer, and what is can do/has done/is doing. Reflecting after a few interesting days...

One of the amazing, new TFA teachers at my school who also teaches 8th grade language arts, organized a Holocaust survivor to speak to our kids as a closing to our unit on the Holocaust novels we have been reading. The kids were very excited about it and really behaved and participated quite well. Andre Mark had been in 4 concentration camps, and volunteered to play soccer against the Nazis on a team organized in Auschwitz. Because he was playing soccer so much against them, they got more food than the other inmates and therefore, believed that he survived because of playing soccer. He even brought his old cleats to show the kids, and I was super proud of some of the girls on my team who came up to the stage to ask him what position he played or was he scared ever when he was playing.

Today we had an away game, and while we were on the wayyyy west end of the city, there were gun shots in the neighborhood my school is in, so the baseball team who was playing at our school, had to cancel the game and everyone had to go into the school for a lockdown. By the time we returned, the police had cleared and everything was seemingly okay, but I drove several girls home and had some text me to tell me they got home safe. I feel like somehow, by our game being away, at least I knew my girls were all with me and safe. Even though we lost, we played in the snow! and had a lot of fun together on the ride there and back.

One of the girls on the team also found out today that her mom has breast cancer, 6 tumors and is going to have to start going through chemotherapy. Her sister is in 6th grade and helps me with the equipment, and they are the cutest, nicest, most positive young ladies I've ever come across. So mature and poised and BRAVE. Both of them came today and helped out and had super attitudes. I don't even know what to do for CM and KM, but I feel like somehow, soccer is saving them... At least giving them an escape from the larger than life responsibilities they have to face when they go home (to their house which is right in the neighborhood where there were gunshots today).

I am so glad I decided to coach, I think that it has brought me a joy in connecting with students and the excitement of competition that I haven't experienced in a long time. Somehow, soccer is saving me. Maybe from going crazy at the end of this year, maybe from not hating all the things about my school, maybe from giving up on the school. But somehow, it is saving me.