Craving//Connecting: Disappointment

What four-year-old soccer taught me about disappointment

June 2025

I open Instagram to a message from the mom of a boy in my daughter’s class. She asks if we would be interested in signing up for fall soccer together. I know the days of giving up our Saturdays in favor of youth sports are on the horizon, I’m just not sure I’m ready for it to happen so soon. I thought we still had a few years before we traded lazy Saturday mornings at home for scrambling for jerseys and cheering for kids on sidelines next to parents who equate city leagues to the major leagues.

On the other hand, this is a family I’m interested in getting to know better and our kids playing soccer together seems like as good a way as any to make that happen. I tell her I’ll talk to my daughter and husband and get back to her.

Unsurprisingly, my extremely extroverted daughter is immediately on board. Also unsurprisingly, my husband mirrors my feelings about sacrificing our Saturdays so soon, but agrees it seems to be in everyone’s best interest. I get back to the mom and tell her we’re in for the season. We both sign up and request to be on each other’s team, continuing on with our summers while visions of soccer balls dance in our heads.

I’m not exactly disappointed by this development, but already our fall is shaping up to look differently than planned.

August 2025

We are mere weeks away from the season starting and neither my mom friend nor I have heard anything about team placements or schedules. She emails and finds out her son is on the Dragonflies. I do the same, only to learn my daughter is on the Fireflies.

So close.

Feeling frustrated that our request wasn’t honored, my friend reaches out to the league and receives some convoluted response about how boys cannot be placed on girls’ teams and girls are only placed on boys’ teams by request. We assumed by, you know, requesting to be placed together that our wishes would be honored, but we learn some teams have already started practicing and it is too late to switch.

I realize I’ve forfeited my Saturdays for nothing and that this budding friendship is not going bloom on the sidelines.

Disappointment number one.

When our coach finally reaches out, he lets us know that practice will begin at 5:00 the next evening. Thankfully we don’t have any conflicts on our calendar, but the short notice contributes to my mounting irritation.

Disappointment number two.

We arrive to our first practice in the sweltering Texas heat. Temperatures soar to over 100 degrees and practice lasts all of 30 minutes. My daughter spends the entire time asking why she isn’t playing with her friend.

Disappointment number three.

At least after talking with the other moms, I learn I’m not alone in my sentiments regarding the less than ideal communication thus far. Like Troy Bolton sang, we’re all in this together.

September 2025

Two days before the first game and we still don’t have a schedule beyond this weekend. Being the planner I am, I log onto the league’s website searching for information, only to be met with the most unhinged schedule I’ve ever encountered.

I naively assumed being one of the youngest teams in the league would give us all early games. But you know what they say about assuming…

While we do have two early games, we also have start times as late as 2:00 pm. Clearly whoever created this schedule has never been around preschoolers in the afternoon. Some of the them still nap at this time for heaven’s sake!

Beyond the principle of having late games, I have already sent out invitations to my daughter’s birthday party and the game on the party day cuts it very close to the party start time. Her game the week after means we will have to leave her best friend’s birthday party early.

Disappointments four, five, and six.

After a couple of half hour practices where the girls are instructed to pass the ball and dribble through cones instead of being taught the concept of soccer, the first game rolls around.

As the mother of a naturally gifted high achiever, I know this will go one of two ways. My daughter will either take to the game right away and fall in love, or she will struggle, take the struggle as a sign she is not cut out for the sport, and stop trying.

I’ll let you guess which option plays out.

The first time the other team takes the ball from her, she runs to the sideline and buries her head in my shoulder in tears. It takes every tool in my parenting toolbox to convince her to run back onto the field and keep playing. Minutes later, she’s back on the sideline after taking a tumble somewhere along midfield. Once again, it takes the convincing of me, Luke, and my dad to get her to finish the game.

Meanwhile, it’s like a scene out of Space Jam where the other team unleashes unearthly talent upon our mere mortal four-year-olds. Did these girls come out of the womb playing soccer?! We are in for a long season.

Disappointment number seven.

In the car on the way home, we partake in the age old past time of the post-sports pep talk. We are careful to toe the line of talking about the game enough where she is not left to stew in her own negative thoughts, but not so much where she internalizes the belief that sports are the end all be all of our family. After all, this is four-year-old soccer we’re talking about.

We remind her of how she’s never played soccer before and how everyone has to start somewhere; that this is how she will learn. We praise her for getting back out on the field after falling down. We encourage her that as she practices she will continue improving.

She tells us that because she fell down, she is never playing soccer again.

Disappointment number eight. Or maybe this is a good thing? Because so far, soccer isn’t going great for any of us.

Somehow, she finds the strength to rally and the weekend Luke has volunteered to guest coach rolls around. At the beginning of the season, before our schedule was announced, our coach told the team he would be out of town the weekend of the 27th and asked if Luke would be willing to step in. Little did we know this would be the same weekend we had two games scheduled, one on Saturday and one on Sunday.

No good deed goes unpunished, it seems.

Disappointment number nine.

As luck would have it, we run into a few snafus over the weekend. Small issues such as referees questioning Luke’s credentials and not timing the games correctly, as well as the other team almost not having enough players pale in comparison to our daughter questioning her dad’s every move.

“Daddy, that’s not how we normally do it.”

“Daddy, you’re supposed to do it this way.”

“Daddy, we don’t do “‘1, 2, 3, Go Fireflies’ yet.”

If he ever considered coaching her in any sport, that question is answered over the course of the weekend.

Disappointment number ten.

October, 2025

October proves to be an unremarkable soccer month, which is to say soccer doesn’t really happen in October.

There is a game scheduled for the Saturday I have already committed to be in Nashville for the Exhale retreat. Of course, we have a two week break following this game and it would’ve worked out wonderfully if the break coincided with my trip, but that feels pretty par for the course of how this season is going.

Disappointment number eleven.

It rains the week games are scheduled to resume. A rescheduled game will be announced, though no one knows when.

We get a taste of what life was like before soccer and Luke and I agree we will most definitely not be encouraging a second season come Spring. We’re almost in the home stretch.

November 2025

The morning after Halloween is a wonderful time for children to play soccer, said no parent ever. It is, however, the one day I am happy with our scheduled time of 10:00 am. We are not forced to be up too early and the game should be over before the really bad weather hits.

I am thankful for my last minute decision to grab a long sleeved t-shirt on our way out the door because when we arrive to the field, it is misty and cold. I quickly put the shirt on under my daughter’s jersey and hustle back to my car to grab the jacket I keep for times like this. My parents grab a fleece blanket from their car to keep her warm on the bench and we all alternate holding our umbrellas overhead and putting them back down while the weather decides what to do.

This dreary weather is disappointment number twelve.

Disappointments aside, I watch in awe as the same little girl who just a few weeks early cried after falling down, pushes her way into the pack. The second the other team takes possession, she runs down the field and positions herself in the goal like her life depends on it. I am so proud of the way she has stuck with this sport. I am in awe of the way healthy aggression has taken the place of passiveness, fear, and confusion. Every time her team makes it near the goal, I hold my breath, willing her to kick the ball in. Not for the purpose of winning, but because I know how proud she will feel if she can just score a goal.

For as much as she has improved, she is one of the few girls on her team who has not scored yet. We have had many conversations about teamwork and how when your team succeeds, you succeed. But I know how much it would mean to her to just get one goal.

Alas, my wish is not granted and my time watching my daughter play soccer has come to an end. The rescheduled game from earlier will take place the following week, when I will once again be out of town.

It’s not that big of a deal, I tell myself.

It’s four-year-old soccer.

But I can’t help from feeling sad.

Disappointment number thirteen.

Please don’t let her score next week when I’m not here, I wish selfishly.

The next weekend rolls around and I’m sitting outside on the back patio of the sprawling estate we have rented for my sister-in-law’s bachelorette party in the Texas Hill Country. While the weather is warmer than we would have hoped in November, it still feels wonderful to sit outside and sip mimosas and coffee in the midmorning air.

I am talking with a group of girls when my sister-in-law walks over with my phone, clearly talking to my daughter. She hands the phone to me and in my gut, I know why she is calling.

“Mommy! Guess what?!”, she exclaims

“I scored three goals!!!!”

My heart stops.

I am elated beyond belief for my daughter. I can hear the pride in her voice. After all these months of practicing, she finally scored not one, but three goals.

But my own heart is broken. I can’t believe I missed the moment. I can’t believe I wasn’t there to bear witness. There will never be another first goal, let alone the first three goals.

I effuse my praise and tell her how proud of her I am and how sad I am to have missed it. I hang up the phone and immediately lock myself in the bathroom to cry.

Disappointment number fourteen.

If my pre-mom self could see me, she would roll her eyes all the way into the back of her head. She would not understand the magnitude of the moment. She would not be able to grasp the mom guilt.

My rational brain knows that in the grand scheme of life, this isn’t that big of a deal. But as a mom who has rarely, if ever, missed a “first”, this hurts.

I later tell Luke to gear up for me to start going to therapy again and I’m only half kidding.

After a season filled with disappointments, this one takes the cake.

But after I dry my tears and the week moves on, I begin to see the season for more than what it lacked.

While this soccer season is not the one I would have chosen, it has taught all of us grit and determination. There were so many times it would have been easier to quit than commit, but we didn’t. We stuck with it, and in turn, gave our daughter the opportunity to practice and get better at something that didn’t come naturally to her. It gave our only child an opportunity for teamwork. It gave this mom a reminder that while I still desperately want to be there for all the Big Moments, the world won’t stop turning if I’m not.

And I’m sure we’ll get more opportunities for important life lessons like this in a few months, because guess who wants to play again in the Spring….🫠