MarriedtoSoccer

It was bound to happen, right? Your husbands’ world revolves around soccer- he eats, sleeps and breathes it and that often times gets passed down to your kiddos. We have 2 boys (ages 13 and 10) and they both play soccer. I had high hopes for hip hop dancers but I got soccer players. It was bound to happen with 20 soccer balls laying around the house and tons of hours of soccer being watched on a weekly basis. It’s in their blood so what more did I expect?!

My 13 year olds obsession started at a super young age. He chose to play with soccer balls over toys and cuddled up next to his dad as they watched a hundred games each week- small exaggeration but pretty damn close. We chose to sign him up on a team until he requested it- we made it 5 years. This is when your life really starts to revolve around the sport. 2-3 practices a week and games on the weekend. Too cold to play in the winter? Don’t worry- that’s what futsal and indoor are for. Make sure you sign up for multiple games to be the parent who takes snacks (I freaking hate this!). Pay lots of money for your kid to play and then keep up with the uniforms, game times, parent chats, travel etc.

Baby brother was born and then I ended up with 2 kids in soccer. Good lord! No one tells you how different your house starts to smell with multiple pairs of cleats hanging around. It smells like the devils ass if you’re wondering. Parent hack: don’t let the cleats inside your home. Buy a boot dryer and keep in in the garage and demand that the cleats go on the boot dryer after every single practice and game.

And the absolute worst part of youth soccer…. THE OTHER PARENTS! These people are the worst. They know much less than you about the sport and they act like they are soccer aficionados. It’s not all of them but a handful and that’s all it takes to ruin your Saturday. More on this in a future post.

Your kid has soccer in their blood so likely they will play at a high level. This means traveling with them- good luck trying to make it to your husbands games and your kids games and stay sane. The schedules will drive you nuts. My oldest practices 4 nights a week and has games on the weekends. His brother is at a club 25 minutes away. As spouses of coaches and players know, we are basically single parents during season so we have to create a little village in each new city so that we have help. All of this on top of working full time for some of us.

I’m the mom who sits away from the other parents to protect my peace. I’m nice enough and have a small group of parent friends on the team but I keep my distance from most parents. I’m the one at every game and my husband makes it when he can. But as soon as he walks up to the fields there are parents that will swarm. They want information, they want to talk about the last MLS game that he coached, they want to discuss player rumors that they’ve heard and they want to have his attention. Being on this side of things is a wild ride!

We love our children and we love this sport but holy hell- be married to and give birth to this sport takes a special kind of person. But somehow we wouldn’t change a thing about it.

Every season brings change- it happens at the end and even through the beginning of each and every season; in life and in the beautiful game of soccer. As wives, we experience the heart break, the excitement and the anxiety of each season of change. We watch families pack up and move to new cities and sometimes we are the family that packs up and moves to new cities. This season of change has been a big one for my family as we are the family that is packing up and moving. We are watching many of our friends do the same. The coaching staff is moving and many of the players are either retiring or moving to a new team. This is when you feel the heart ache. This is when you start over. This is when you say goodbye to friends who have become family and you prepare to start a new journey in a new city.

If you have children these moves become harder and harder. They are leaving their schools, their friends and their sports teams. You make memories with your kids in each city and home that you live in and sometimes it’s hard to pack up those memories. All families handle the move differently… some wives and children go right away in January when their husbands move. Some wait and move in February when preseason is over. I choose to stay until the school year is complete.

This means that right now my husband is living in Dallas while I’m still in Austin- the kids and I will be here until June. This move is easier because it’s a 3 hour drive. Last move was a 16 hour drive so we had to hop on a plane every couple of weeks.

Choosing this way means that I will be here alone during the winter months when Austin will likely have a freeze (we lose power in the freeze) and I will have to figure it out with 2 kids. It also means that I will be alone while putting the house on the market and packing up the house to move. It means that my husband will likely miss our 5th graders graduation ceremony. I will be a “single mom” trying to navigate my kids’ schedules. When both of them have soccer games at the same time, I will need to get it figured out. All of this while my husband also wants us to make as many home games as possible in Dallas.

With the hard, comes the exciting. Come June we get to move into a new home and make it our own. The kids get to decorate their new rooms. And we get reunited with hubby/papi. We will spend the summer exploring the city- we love finding new favorite restaurants and parks. We meet new friends and create new memories.

The reality is that we will likely do this many more times over. It’s beautiful, hard, stressful, exciting, heartbreaking and fun all at the same time.

Here’s to hoping that all of us saying goodbye to friends and/or our cities have a wonderful 2025 full of hope and adventure!

I knew from an early age that I didn’t want to marry a man that would wear a suit and sit behind a desk everyday. BORING! I wanted someone who is creative and adventurous; an artist. I dated all types of artists; painters, muscians- you name it. And then I met THE ONE.

He was tall, dark and handsome; running down the field after the ball with his longish hair flowing in the wind. He was supposed to be a fling after a break-up … now that name on the back of his jersey is my last name.

His face was on billboards all over Atlanta, they handed out bobble heads of him on a big game night, people chanted his name from the stands and he wore the captains band. Glamorous, right? WRONG! Everything we did was planned around practices and games. The outcome of games affected his mood. He wouldn’t have sex the night before a game because it would “take his legs” and after games he would stay awake until the wee hours of the morning watching footage from the game. What annoyed me most? He wouldn’t eat desert when I was eating it. UGH!

Don’t get me wrong- there were fun sides of being a WAG. We were often asked to go to exclusive events, given things for free and my man was at home for most of the day- no 9-5 schedules here.

He was at the end of his career so I wasn’t a WAG for long (thank God) but then this fling-turned-husband decided his calling was to be a coach and the real stress began. Stay tuned to hear more about that…