You can call me Coach Jones

The best day of the year is the first day of soccer season, in my opinion at least. For International School of Tegucigalpa (IST), that day was today. I wanted so badly to help out with the soccer teams at my school this year that I went to the athletic director and told him I would be willing to do absolutely anything as long as I got to be out there practicing with the team. He had a better idea: he made me head coach of the 7th and 8th grade girls team. My own team! I was so excited!

As soon as the school bell rang at the end of the day, girls scurried out of classrooms to catch the bus that takes them out to the practice field a few miles away. Among those girls was Ms. Jones (that's me), running to catch the bus, soccer boots in hand. When we got out to the field I anxiously strapped on my boots and joined the other coaches. This is when I realized that none of them speak any English at all and could not tell me what was going on or how the events of this first day were going to play out. One of the coaches had all the girls sit on the bleachers and started talking to them while the rest of us coaches were lined up before them. Suddenly, I heard him say the words, "Ms. Jones" followed by something else in Spanish. Then everyone's eyes were on me and it went silent. Apparently I was supposed to say something. I had no clue what. Luckily one of my students looked at me and said, "He is asking you to tell us about yourself." I wish I could say this was the only awkward moment of the day, but that would have been a lie and made my life too easy.

Finally it was time to meet my team. I didn't remember that 7th and 8th graders were so little! We walked out onto our field: a dirt field filled with lots of gravel and large, sharp, jagged rocks sticking out of the ground - as if I didn't hurt myself enough playing on grass, we might as well make things a little more dangerous! I was given a bag of soccer balls and a sack of scrimmage jerseys and then told to begin practice. The soccer balls were extremely flat and almost impossible to control when kicked, but still managed to break a piece off of our goal, which was made of old rotting wood sticking up out of the ground. We only managed to lose one ball in the bush during practice and I have no idea what positions my girls play because I don't know the words for them in Spanish and they don't know the words for them in English.

And yet, none of that mattered.

Despite everything that went terribly wrong today, I was out on that soccer field with a group of girls who want to learn to play soccer and that is one of the most wonderful things in the world. We have a lot of work to do if we plan on qualifying to San Pedro, but I think we are up to the challenge!