I wasn’t much of a soccer fan before I moved to Delaware… and for good reason.
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The only things I knew about the most popular sport in the world was based off my one-game stint on the Red Team when I was 6, and the year I spent living with the McMullen brothers in Charleston, pretending that I knew the difference between Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid so they wouldn’t spend an hour trying to explain it to me.
Though my futbol encounters were sparse, they always seemed to bring their fair share of embarrassment. I cried when we lost 8-0 to the Blue Team, and while I would never admit this in public, again when Conor and Sean made fun of me in front of everyone at their 2010 World Cup party for asking: “So, Spain, huh? Are they any good or…?”
But it wasn’t entirely my fault. You see, the difference between the McMullen brothers and me (aside from our vastly different doctor-recommended SPF numbers) is that they grew up here in Sussex County, and I grew up in Baltimore.
And here in Sussex County, as soon as you can walk, you start kicking soccer balls. Just like how, over in Baltimore, as soon as you can walk, you pick up a lacrosse stick. The same can also be said for people from Canada born and raised on hockey, or people from New York born and raised on being unbearable to sit next to in restaurants.
Eventually, I’d shake my closed-minded preconceptions and find out what 3.5 billion people already knew: soccer… kind of rules. But it wasn’t until I moved here and got to know the River Soccer community that I really appreciated the sport and got to see what I had been missing, and it wasn’t until last week when I realized that around here, soccer is more than just a game.
I was sitting at my desk at the office, trying to look like I was actually working, when Indian River High School head coach Steve Kilby called me to let me know that Josh Timmons was about to score his first career goal. (For those of you that don’t know Josh, he inspired the TOP Soccer program for special-needs players at the River Soccer Club and plays on the Indians’ JV team.)
Without even thinking about it, I was already scrambling for my keys and dialing Chris Clark to tell him to grab his camera and cancel his afternoon shuffleboard match at Brandywine — suddenly spirited, not only because now I actually did look like I was working for once, in front of the whole office, but also because I really did want to be there.
Rare is a moment in sports where both sides share the same expression after the same play. But after Josh followed a through ball and knocked it to the back of the net, not only was he smiling, not only were his teammates smiling, and all his coaches, too, but so were the ones from Dover, the Dover goalkeeper who had let in the shot, and anyone else there that day — including a certain Coastal Point reporter who was lucky enough to get a last-minute phone call and a certain Coastal Point photographer who was lucky enough to get a last-minute shuffleboard fill-in during “Wheel of Fortune.”
It was true empathy on display, which is something I can’t say that I’ve ever seen before and something I’m not sure if I’ll see ever again. That moment and that goal most definitely belonged to Josh, but it also belonged to everyone in the River Soccer community, too, because even more than soccer, that’s what that community is all about.
I think Josh summed it up better than I ever could when he told his parents after the game that it was the best day of his life, not because he had scored a goal, but because he had helped his team — something coach Howard Gerken shared with me just when I thought that true empathy was something that I’d probably never see again.
It’s hearing something like that, and getting to see something like last Thursday, that no matter where you grew up or what sport you grew up playing, will make you glad that now you’re a soccer fan in Sussex County.
