Somewhere in Jersey

 I was on the phone with a coach to prep for a football game. The winner of the game would win a trip to the NJCAA National Championship tournament in Huntsville, Alabama. My whole soul was on fire.

The Coach and I had passed the business nature of the call and were just talking. He said something like, “My God, you’re so handsome. I can hear it in your voice.” I put him at ease and then he said something that was almost perfect, “There’s just something about soccer where you just want to make it your life.”

FLASHBACK – SOMETIME IN AUGUST, 2022

A late afternoon lunch with my special lady-friend, Toots. The Premier League season has started. I’m consuming everything I can about football. Articles, books, podcasts, anything. I’m all tore up inside because this isn’t how I make my living.

AUGUST -- ONE YEAR LATER

I set up my broadcast board on an elevated chair and clip a mic to my chest. The mic is connected to my phone. Minutes away from a doubleheader between my home school Mercer County Community College and Harcum College. On the PA:

            “You only get one shot, do not miss your chance 

                to blow

             This opportunity comes once in a lifetime, yo.”

Except it wasn’t awesome! Rosters for the teams weren’t available until days before the game and they were filled with international names. Which is actually awesome but the extra work tests a simple, American mind. I wasn’t able to speak to any of the coaches and that was fine. This was a “dry run.”

This was the reason my life changed. I had a new job with terrible hours and full benefits. I was a full-time college student midway (I hope) through my life. I suffer from a fantasia of insecurities but I’ve always believed one thing: I had the goods to be a play-by-play broadcaster. Just needed a chance.

Here it was. The fantasias made their appearance. “You’re out of your mind! You can’t call football. You’re unprepared! But they didn’t matter. Because I was in the booth and I was ready. And what put me in that booth was a love of football.

FLASHBACK – SUMMER OF 1982 – SOMWHERE IN NEW JERSEY

Your boy has just won “Best Defensive Player” at the local soccer camp for the second year in a row. There was no doubt that in Jersey or anywhere, the greatest footballer in the world was Steven Schechter.

The next season our team beat the hell out of the league. We won all our games by a margin of at least five. Here comes the final game and no one is in any ways stressed. No one scored until they did late in the game. We lost. That game broke every piece of my heart. Anything that powerful has to be respected. Football, in the most infuriating way possible, is about love.

OCTOBER 31, 2024 – 4:53am

I’m driving to work where the hours are tough but they give you a scholarship award. After the shift I’ll head to the field for the first of five games in three days. The Region 19 Championships for men’s and women’s soccer are at Mercer and I’m on the call. Broadcast boards and charts are in my bag along with copies of Zonal Marking by Michael Cox and My Turn by Johan Cruyff. I feel alive.

The only thing we can do is try. College is the opportunity to try, fail, learn, try, and fail again. So is life. I have goals. I have dreams.

NOVEMBER 8, 2024 -- SOMETIME AFTER 2pm

The Mercer women’s team have lost the East District title game. The team had won twelve games in a row until a draw closed out their season. Then they lost 4-3 in a game where they held a 2-0 lead in the first half. Football really is a bag of rubbish.

The men’s district final was next and Mercer won. They’ll move on the Huntsville, Alabama and the National Championship tournament. I went home to Toots who made the unbelievable decision to believe in me.

We’re going to Europe in December where we plan on attending an Ajax match at Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam. It’ll be my first professional match live. It’ll be in an impossibly beautiful city where Total Football was nourished. And in a stadium named for a brilliant and impossible man who, along with Rinus Michels, Ted Lasso, and many others, helped to make the beautiful game as breathtaking as possible. I won’t be calling play-by-play for this one. But down the line, we’ll see. We’re allowed to try. And to dream.