Finally, soccer is back, and along with it, a great deal of pleasure for me. My player is no longer the youngest player on the pitch in the San Francisco public school system games, as he was much of the past two years, but an upperclassman, big, tall, strong, fast, and with a certain amount of attitude.

At this point he knows the way the game is played around here, he knows the fields, and he knows the refs.

The ref in today's opening season game is not one he likes. "He's a power freak. If you question his calls, he talks you down," he told me after the game.

I'm pretty sure what he means by that is the ref makes a player feel disrespected when he questions a call.

The situation today that precipitated our conversation afterward was the moment when I saw Aidan get in the ref's face. An opposing player had kicked his teammate, the keeper, in the chest during an attempt to score but was not called for a foul.

Aidan chose to disagree. The problem with this is he already had been called for a yellow card when he had taken out a striker earlier, and with one more, he would be disqualified from playing in next Tuesday's game.

To his coach's and my relief, a second card was not delivered.

After the game the coach walked over to me and said, "I was really proud of the way Aidan defended his keeper."

That's the essence of soccer for a defender -- you don't stand by and let any opponent mess with your teammate, especially your keeper.

After the game, I watched Aidan and his keeper embrace and smile, because at the end of it all, they had beaten the other team, which was short-handed, 10-4.

Not really anything more than a warmup game, under the circumstances. But a good start, with more difficult challenges to come.

You know what's cool? In a society that continues to pretend that race is a divisive issue, I have a son who is the only white kid on a team with two Asians and maybe 25 Latinos. English is the second language on this team. He's an outlier, in other words, someone way outside of the normal comfort zone for most kids like him.

But then again he's an athlete, who loves soccer, and considers himself a student of the game. And, he's a competitor who plays the game hard.

For me, it's all just a joy to watch. Plus his Spanish is getting way better.

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