On Power Soccer Dinners
One of my coworkers asked me, aside from obviously winning and losing, what the highest and lowest moments were for me during our time at Power Soccer Nationals. There weren't that many low moments, to be honest with you, but I mentioned the highs in my recap the other day. I think the high moments, outside of the matches themselves, were our team dinners every night in the hotel.
There was no formal fanfare. Everybody ordered what they wanted. For my family, we ordered in from Red Robin, Mission BBQ, and Texas Roadhouse (I had to have a celebratory steak after our championship). Every time it was funny because we kind of rotated around restaurants. Somebody got something that looked good, so the next night, another family would get that. We put together a bunch of tables by the windows and enjoyed each other’s company. It was a true celebration. Of course, it helped that we were playing well and everybody was feeling good. Obviously, that kept our spirits up. However, I think something deeper is at play here.
I have always been a proponent of team dinners. Every year we go to Montréal, and we always have dinner together on Saturday night. For those of you who have never been a part of a power soccer event, it is quite a production. It is an investment of time and money, not only for the athlete but also for their families or whoever is helping them. When you finally arrive at dinner at night, the day is over, and you made it through another day. As I said, hopefully you have a few victories under your belt by dinnertime, but just getting there and making this happen is a relief.
Josef Pieper wrote about why humans celebrate festivals, and he said, “To hold a celebration means to affirm the basic meaningfulness of the universe and a sense of oneness with it, of inclusion within it. In celebrating, in holding festivals upon occasion, man experiences the world in an aspect other than the everyday one.” I feel like power soccer dinners are very much like this. It is good and meaningful that we are competing, and we are not professionals. It is not like we are traveling as a team all the time; most of what we do are day trips. As a result, when we get together after pulling off a trip, whether to Montréal or Fort Wayne, there is a basic level of meaningfulness. We did something good and meaningful. That is worth celebrating.
As we sat at the tables in the lobby Sunday night after our victory, I mentioned it previously, but I felt like the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings after they returned to the Shire. In the movie version, you see the four of them sitting at the table, and life is going on as normal for everyone around them. The other hobbits don’t realize all that they went through on their adventure; they didn’t realize that each of the hobbits played an important role in saving the world. However, the four of them look at each other and understand. There is a silent moment of affirmation, recognizing the meaningfulness of what they have just done.
We did not save the world by playing power soccer, but there is an understanding that the mission was accomplished. The world continues to go on, and most people will never know. That is fine. It is enough that we did our job and got the result that we wanted. I think most power soccer people can probably understand this. Even when we don’t win, there is a sense of joy that comes from making it through the event and making it happen.