MamaWriters are excited to have the wonderful Carol Ericson with us today.   Her latest Harlequin release, The Sheriff of Silverhill, just released, and while writing numerous Harlequin Intrigues throughout the year, Carol also raises two boys and supports them in all their interests, such as, oh,  say, attending soccer games.  But that’s not to say it’s always pretty . . .

Please help us welcome Carol Ericson!

Soccer Moms Gone Wild

I’m not sure I ever understood the popular phrase “soccer mom.” Was it a put-down? A targeted demographic? A shorthand way to describe a middle-aged, middle-class woman decked out in mom jeans shuttling her kids to events in her minivan?

I’m middle-aged, middle-class, and I do a lot of shuttling. But I puke at the idea of mom jeans (I like my tight Levi’s and pointy-toe, high-heeled, black boots!) and I shun the minivan in favor of an zippy Honda CRV. However, I got to thinking about that phrase this weekend as the other moms on my younger son’s soccer team and I gave a little twist to that hackneyed term, soccer mom.

My 12-year old son’s club soccer team played in a tournament this past weekend. We won our first game in the morning (notice the use of the pronoun “we” even though I never touched a soccer ball all weekend), and then returned for our second game that afternoon. The game got off to a bad start for our family. In between soccer games, my son had a basketball game (there’s that shuttling again). The basketball game was at 2:30 and the soccer game at 3:30. Since the basketball game consists of four 8-minute quarters, I figured we’d have enough time to finish the basketball game and then rush over to the soccer game and get there on time, even though my son would miss the warm-up. My husband, who was wearing shorts, a T-shirt and a sweatshirt claimed he didn’t realize we were going straight to the outdoor soccer game from the indoor basketball game and needed pants and a heavier sweatshirt (Dude, this is So Cal – it was about 66 degrees at the time). We got into a spat about it because we had 15 minutes to get to the soccer game, so he gave up, but I’d already turned toward home so I had to go a few blocks out of the way to get back on track to the soccer game. So everyone was grumpy on the way over to the game. I dropped off my son at the gate at exactly 3:30 PM and told him to stop by the check-in table and run down to the field.

We parked the car and went into the stadium (high school football turf field converted to soccer field) only to find my son dejectedly sitting in the stands with the other parents. He informed me that the lady at the check-in desk had already turned the cards in and he couldn’t play the first half of the game. I marched to the check-in desk and told the soccer Nazi…I mean check-in lady…that my son had arrived before kick-off. Didn’t matter. Cards had already gone down to the ref; he couldn’t play the first half. Then I marched back up and asked if he could sit with his team on the bench, and the soccer Na…nice check-in lady said, “No. The coach might forget and put him in the game.” Huh?

Okay, so we sat and watched our team go down 2 – 0 in the first half. At the half-time, my son rushed down to the field to join his team. His presence on the field made no difference, as the other team proceeded to score goal after goal on us. I think it was at about the fourth goal that I and a few of the moms around me noticed that the parents on the other team, seated to our right, were laughing! First we looked at each other in astonishment and then we turned and looked at them. Now in club soccer neither the kids nor the parents are as sweet and nice as they are in AYSO (American Youth Soccer Organization), but laughing at another team’s ineptness?

Boy, did those parents cross the wrong soccer moms. We all gave them the evil eye, and one of the laughing dads turned and said, “What?” We gave him not only a piece, but a huge portion of our minds. We told him they were rude and poor sports. He backpedaled and claimed they were laughing at their own team. Really? Laughing because they just scored their fifth unanswered goal? We jumped all over him for that lame excuse too.

Our attack didn’t shut them up though. They continued to laugh at each successive goal, and we continued to give them dirty looks and tell them how ignorant they were. Through the entire episode, my husband sat next to me smirking and my older son was rolling his eyes. After the game, which I think we lost 6 – 0, my husband and son told me they thought we were all going to get into a rumble. The other moms and I were so fired up because NOBODY LAUGHS AT OUR BOYS! We could’ve wound up on the six o’clock news.

So when I think of that phrase, soccer mom, I’m not sure I have the same image as the one those words are meant to convey. Most of the soccer or sports moms I know, including myself, not only shuttle the kids to practices and games, we also scream and cheer at those games, are official scorekeepers, team moms, work the announcer’s booth, the snack bar, order and distribute uniforms, serve on the Boards, handle the money, and help run the volunteer organizations that keep youth sports running. In short, we approach our kids’ sports the same way we approach everything else as moms—we do it all!

So three cheers for all you soccer moms and baseball moms and hockey moms and water polo moms, and basketball moms, and so on. And don’t let anyone cross you…ever.