11/05/2023
I can now relate to all this
I can remember vividly the first day Beth turned up for training. Just 6 years old, she was wearing an oversized football kit and, that first session, could barely kick the ball. Joining a boys' team, she was the only girl. Totally unphased, she walked out onto the pitch, and got stuck in amongst her team mates.
If you'd told me back then that Beth would a) still be playing six years later, and b) still be playing for the same team, I would have laughed at you. I had absolutely no idea of just how central football was about to become to all our lives, nor how important that team were going to become to Beth.
Week in, week out, Beth and her team turned out for training. Seasons passed, players moved on. The coaches changed.
Gradually, every so gradually, the team got better.
For one or two seasons, they lost almost every single game. Their heads stayed up. They kept plugging away. Their brilliant, brilliant coaches - all of them volunteers - kept working with the kids. Encouraging them. Laughing with them. Developing them. Ensuring, always, that they were having fun.
Football started getting serious for Beth. She was signed by a high profile girls' team, and thought that she might have to leave her boys' team. Despite the incredible opportunity she'd been given, she hesitated. I knew how much she loved the team she'd started out with, how devastated she would have been to leave her teammates. We found a way to make it work, for her to continue to play for both teams. It completely takes over our family life, with both training and matches; and I have never regretted it for a moment 😊
The team continued to improve. With the coaches working with them, they started to win games. One match, then another. And another. Suddenly, the team were looking around at one another, and believing. They could do this. They really could.
This season, U12s, is the first season of competitive football for teams.
Beth's team - who, two seasons ago, were losing every single game..........came second in the league. Six years of hard work, culminating in this incredible achievement. I cannot describe how much it has been deserved.
It has been a bittersweet victory. Because, for various reasons: this season has turned out to be the team's last.
They are folding; and we have all been devastated.
I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of grassroots football since Beth has started playing. Beth's team are the most fantastically supportive group of players, parents and coaches you could ever hope to meet. It is very hard to say goodbye to that.
But sometimes great things do have to come to an end. And we realise as they do, how lucky we have been to have found one another.
Today, the team played their final match. Showing grassroots volunteering spirit at its finest, the coaches rallied around at the last minute to find an alternative pitch when logistical issues meant the planned venue wasn't available. The grassroots volunteer community is truly amazing ❤️
And what a performance the boys + Beth put in. Storming their way to a 14-0 victory (and full credit to their opponents, whose heads rarely dropped), Beth, solid in her usual position at centre back had very little to do. So her coach moved her up front for a brief period, upon which she scored two cracking goals..... prompting Jamie (who, brilliantly, had rocked up to watch her play wearing his pyjamas 😂) to tell her that he thought she'd played a bit like Haaland. I've rarely seen her smile so wide 😊
The final whistle went, and, with the whole team being collectively awarded player of the match, we took the goals down for the final time.
End of an era.
What an era it's been.
Things could have turned out very differently for Beth. Not all teams might have welcomed a lone girl (and a girl who, when she started out, wasn't very good at all!) in the way that Beth's team did. Beth has had nothing but support from players, parents and coaches alike, from the day that she started. Of course that should be the case absolutely everywhere: but I know that it isn't. With a different team, Beth might have given up on football years ago. How phenomenally lucky we are, that she found the team that she did.
To all of Beth's coaches, teammates (particular shout out to Harry, who along with Beth is one of the two "OGs", as Jamie would call them 😂 - having been there right from the start), and fellow parents: Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. For Beth, and for us, you've been family, these past six years.
Beth, and all of the team, will of course go on to find new teams to play for.
But it won't be the same.
I don't know what Beth's football career will go on to hold for her. But I do know that she has been the luckiest girl in the world, to have had such an amazing team around her for the past six years, in her first footballing home. She has made friends for life. When Beth's girls' team recently made it to the cup final, two of the boys she plays with made the two hour round trip to support her, cheering her even after a substantial loss. Now that's friendship.
I mused over what my favourite memories of the team have been, over the years. There have been some incredible victories, and some plucky draws and losses. Any of which I could pick.
In the end, though, I think my favourite memories will always be of a bog standard Thursday night training session. The sun slowly setting as Beth, and the boys, and their coaches, played a friendly. Chatting, and laughing, and gently taking the p**s out of one another......and all of them absolutely beaming, from ear to ear 😊
Thank you, HH. You have been, genuinely: simply the best ❤️
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