Mosquito and Goliath

"Three minutes, Shelby!" I bellow across the ocher plain, my voice swallowed up by the gusting wind and the war whoops on the sideline. "Three minutes -- and it's game over!"

"Don't worry none, Shelby's gonna take him," the Mosquito's father says in his lazy West Virginia drawl. "Shelby's gonna chew him up, y'all will see." Terry Hammond is a walking refrigerator, a cabinet installer by trade and a former high school jock who signed on as my assistant coach on a lark and quickly became absorbed in every aspect of this game that neither of us had ever played.

The big man watches, expressionless, as Beltsville's horde closes in on his only child, the little girl who changed him from a pool shark and rabid football fan into a doting butler, chauffeur and equipment manager for a junior soccer prodigy.

The attackers are 20 feet out, tearing toward the right side of the goal, when they begin their familiar death spiral. Their coach, a towering guy in his mid-fifties with a receded hairline and a sprig of mustache under his nose, has been teaching this maneuver to kids for more than a decade. His name is Dave Pinchotti. He is one of the most well-regarded coaches in Prince George's County, a gracious sort who never fails to congratulate opposing coaches after crushing their hopes.

With Pinchotti's alpha striker bearing down on the net, the rest of the wolf pack veers to the left and fans out in front of the goal. When Sluggo shoots, they will swarm the Mosquito, confusing her goalie, coming at the ball from all sides. That's their plan. But then, Shelby makes her move. Facing her opponent like a basketball guard, she shuffles three steps to her right, taking away the inches that Sluggo needs to shoot to the deep right corner of her net -- the shot he wants. In closing his angle, she forces him toward the center, where her goalkeeper can better make a play if Shelby falls down or falters. What's more, her move forces the rest of the pack to move left to open up space for their leader until they drift . . . one by one . . . out of the play.

To make sure they stay that way, the Hornets' No. 2 defender, an insubordinate little genius named Linus Hamilton, dashes in between them and the outside goalpost for the checkmate. No kid on the team has a better sense of the geometry of the game than Linus, and no kid is quite so adept at critiquing the performance of the coaches.

"You might want to try this," he'll say, or, "Their forward looks small, but it's a mistake to underestimate him."

"Thank you, Professor," we'll tell him, "Now please sit down."

"Linus's problem," I tell Terry Hammond one day at practice, "is that he's smarter than us."

In fact, they are all smarter than we are, more adaptable, more flexible thinkers for not having a lifetime of preconceived notions about sports and how they should be played. In my journey from bumbling Parents' Night draftee to ranting soccer freak and, finally, to fairly able coach, I would learn most of what I needed to know from children.

It's one-on-one now, the Mosquito vs. Sluggo, and Sluggo is confused. His overwhelming advantage has dissolved, and this damnable girl has shown no sign of folding. There is no fear in her eyes, which are blazing, locked onto the ball and the movement of his hooves.

"There is no animal more invincible than a woman," wrote the ancient Greek comedian Aristophanes, "nor fire either, nor any wildcat so ruthless." Sluggo is about to learn the truth of this.