Playing from the sidelines in flip-flops

Another memory recently came up in my Facebook from the years that my kids were growing up and playing sports.

They're older now, 23 and 19, and are no longer involved in organized sport. But we certainly spent more than our fair share of time inside hockey rinks and at soccer fields when they were younger.

Sometimes it was debatable which was the better or worse venue.

Yes, a rink was cold, but at least when it rained you were dry.

Conversely, you didn't need to wear a jacket to watch your kids play soccer in the summer.

I had a lot of involvement with my kids' sports activities. I was the chauffeur. I fundraised. I paid for registrations. In Timbits hockey and soccer I made sure their socks matched their jerseys and shorts or hockey pants. (It was a mom obsession.)

I even managed many minor hockey and high school hockey teams they played on.

Their younger years of sports, while perhaps not as exciting, were always cute.

I think back to the days of their early soccer years when the jerseys the kids wore were so big they looked like dresses.

The pitfall to the cuteness, of course, was if a player fell on the field anywhere near the ball they were apt to get kicked as much as the ball by their teammates.

Back then it was all about the kicking.

Ball.

Belly.

Same difference.

Although I was never a player, at times it felt like one, especially as my kids aged and the pace of the games got faster.

In soccer, if one of my sons had control of the ball anywhere near the net, I tended to tighten my toes and I could feel my leg twitch as I was trying to kick the ball into the net for him from where I was sitting.

Who needs soccer cleats when you've got flip-flops?

Half the time I didn't even realize I was doing it. It was like one of those involuntary knee reflex things except that no one was hitting me below the knee with a rubber hammer.

And I wasn't the only one.

My dad once mentioned to me how tiring it was watching my boys play sports. In hockey, he said, you were always leaning into the play from the stands, twisting your body as they manoeuvred their way on the ice with the puck.

In soccer, he said, you were constantly kicking the ball from your seat on the sidelines.

When my oldest son played rugby, we didn't get as involved from the sidelines – mostly because we didn't have a clue what was going on. We did, however, cringe a lot.

Rugby is very a very physical sport – while we didn't know the rules of the sport, that part we clearly understood.

So our playing days were kept to hockey and soccer.

Things could have always been worse, I suppose. At least while watching hockey we never accidentally checked the parent standing next to us into the boards if we got carried away.

And I never did kick any of the parents sitting next to me at soccer games.

Still, in a way, I was convinced that the kicking reflex was just a natural evolution of parenthood.

When I was in the delivery room in labour, I could hear the doctor say, “Push !!!! ”

Years later, it was almost as if I could hear the doctor standing over my shoulder saying, “Now kick !!!! ”