House League

Right before the dawn of dunking burned a deeper ritual, that of getting up at 6:30 on a Saturday morning, watching a few half hours of cartoons, playing House League Soccer, and then coming back to watch more cartoons (and picking up McDonald's if we were lucky). Those original years before it was even possible to play on a bigger, better, and traveling-farther team were amazing. I don't remember a whole lot of the actual soccer, but more just being in awe at those that kick the ball hard (the aforementioned John Sheehan and Max Farley), messing around at practice (getting in fights with the Wheelers, a pair of brothers bent on destroying everyone and everything, including each other - the younger one, Nathan, bit me, twice, and the older one I got into an actual fight with at DZ Discovery Zone (probably my only true fight in life); I mean he had my name, c'mon!), and avoiding the oranges at half time (don't ask me why. I love them now, but never tried them then). Soccer was a huge Waterford tradition, as was scrimmaging the Hamilton kids, who for whatever god-forsaken reason, ALL had rat tails. It was a deeply potent sport in those days, before we knew the meaning of anything really, back when for whatever reason the opening of the MLS coincided with our youth; back when we went to DC United games to watch Marco Etcheverry rip shit up, marveling at how much he resembled what we believed the greatest player of all our peers, Edwin Hammerman, would grow up to be. The kid scored a goal off a corner with a bicycle kick when we were like ten years old.