Off the Bench: The chronicles of rec league

Photo credit: Robbie Mehling/Soc Takes

Whenever people ask me what it is that I do, I answer that I write about soccer. I’ve been doing this to some extent for most of the past five years. Their follow-up question is, almost always, “Oh, so you play soccer?” or some other variation of the same.

I don’t play soccer. I’ve never played soccer. Not in school, not as a kid, not even intramural. The entire extent of my soccer-playing experience is two pickup games with some friends from college back in 2014, and about 10 minutes on the field in FC Dallas‘ stadium following the Dallas Beer Guardians vs. El Matador game earlier this year. In total, that’s less than half an hour spent on a soccer field for the purposes of kicking the ball.

This, I’ve found, is unusually rare among soccer writers. In my defense, I was diagnosed with arthritis when I was 19, so my physical activities have been rather limited for years. That said, I’m actually still in moderately passable shape, and a new treatment regiment has me to where I’m reasonably confident I might be able to actually play.

So, the actual point of this short post: I signed up for a rec league. More specifically, it’s the 7-v-7 coed rec league run by the Fort Worth Vaqueros this fall. It was a bit of an impulse decision, but I don’t regret it in the slightest (yet).

Following this decision to sign up, I went out and bought the requisite cleats and shin guards for the first time in my life. I went with something cheap and on sale at the local Academy because honestly, I’m not sinking in a tonne of money for something I know nothing about. Since then, I’ve been religiously checking the league website for the schedule release and to find out what team I’m on. I registered as a free agent, so I have no idea who my teammates will be, who my coach will be and how they will react to someone with literally zero experience joining their team.

The start of the season has already been delayed at least two weeks. The original start date was September 16, and then September 23, and now, potentially, this upcoming Sunday. On the off chance I find out about my team and teammates in the next 48 hours, I wanted to get this short (for me, at least) post up.

I know this is not what we normally do here at Soc Takes, but this is such an odd experience that I hope you’ll all find interesting.

Follow John on Twitter: @JohnMLTX.

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