The American Work Ethic

This was Beach Clean-Up Day, one of the community service days school kids here and everywhere perform during the year. It was foggy but lovely out at Ocean Beach. Most of what we found was common detritus -- bottle caps, cigarette butts, plastic, broken bottles -- but we also found some drug syringes and my son found a small packet of marijuana.

Later, the day's main action occurred out at the Presidio, the former long-time Army base that now is part of the City of San Francisco. There, the girls' team I wrote about recently finally found out what it feels like to succeed after three long seasons of hard work.

Regular visitors may recall that this team, which is called the Palominos, came into today with an all-time record of 0-19 and a scoring deficiency of 6-91. Today's opponents beat them the last time they met by a score of 6-2.

But today, after weeks of practices, and clinics, and the accumulated frustration of so many continuing losses, the Palominos turned into a real soccer team.

They dominated play against a team that seemed unprepared to not be able to coast to yet another victory over a younger, smaller team that they'd beaten by four goals just three weeks earlier.

Nevertheless, no one could score a goal.

At halftime, it was 0-0.

More than halfway through the second half, it still was scoreless, when suddenly you could almost sense our girls collectively had finally simply had enough of losing and started upping their aggression.

In soccer, much of what happens depends upon who gets to the ball first, wherever on the pitch that may be. I noticed that our girls were beating the other team to the ball over and over, and I knew that -- in the unwritten rule that underlies soccer games -- they were going to get a scoring chance at some point.

Finally they did.

A perfect feed by the left forward to the center forward led to a slicing shot well outside of the keeper's range. At the moment the ball left the shooter's foot, I knew. As did other parents. We all yelled at the top of our voices as that sphere seemingly in slow motion inexorably ripped across the white line and into the back of the net.

Moments later, the game ended. Victory, sweet victory!

After shaking hands with the losing team, our girls raced across the field to us, their long-suffering but ever-loyal parents.

My daughter was the first to arrive and I swept her up and swung her around and around.

Tonight, back home, we had a beautiful sunset, with deep streaks of red, pink, yellow, orange, blue and purple lighting up the Western sky.

And I did something I almost never do: I bought them junk food. Yep, the kids ate donuts.

"Congratulations, winners!" (Click to look at those faces.)



Photo by Joshua Ets-Hokins