You've not really lived until you've sat out in freezing rain under a blanket and an umbrella and watched your daughters run around playing soccer in the slush and the mud. My older daughter used to get off on it. She looked liked she enjoyed being soaked to the bone. This is so obviously not an American sport. I sat in front of screaming banshees with cowbells and obscenities in a basketball gym. If you yell anything just a little off key on a soccer field, they will throw you out and throw your kids' coach out. The nice thing about AYSO, anybody that wants to play can play. They don't keep score when the kids are real young.
Later there are fights and nasty things (on the field), just like in basketball. We had a record of losing more than winning, but what are you going to do? No one died from pneumonia. The High School Soccer coaches were generally just as lousy as the High School Basketball coaches. AYSO coaches were the fathers of one of the girls, so it was hard to get mad at them. In fact the Refs were from the neighborhood as well.
The Los Angeles Unified School District, back in the 80s and 90s decided that there were too many fights and brawls resulting from sport events, so they began to schedule them for mid-afternoon. They are only now easing off of it and as a result if you wanted to see your kid play, you had to run out from work about three in the afternoon and drive great distances some times to watch (there were usually just a few parents there). I imagine some blue collar gut never ever getting to see his kids play. I was lucky to be able to sit in the rain.
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