Super Shins: What I Can Take Away from Girl's Soccer

Men rarely hold grudges. Have you noticed this? Growing up with three guys, I have seen every conceivable conflict arise within the fiery, caged, death-match ring of testosterone: everything from a misunderstood chess move to an out-and-out fist fight over something that currently escapes my memory (something to do with who got to be the Red Power Ranger). 

However, no matter how severe the conflict, no matter how much carnage is wrought in the process, this is literally all you have to do to end it...

...This is why conflict-resolution is so much easier with guys. They don't really seem to hold grudges, or at least, not for very long. 

Women, on the other hand...well, there's a reason why my three best friends are dudes. I know women, I am a "women" and I know that when something makes me angry, I can walk through walls if I feel like it. And I'm a moderately tempered chick:

It wasn't until I joined a girl's Jr. High soccer team that I came to the full realization of the raging estrogen ocean. Sweet Little Suzy puts on a pair of shin guards and suddenly we have a Dr. Jekyl / Mr. Hyde effect...

...even at age twelve, the female is an evil, blood-sucking juggernaut sprinkled with a thin surface layer of sugar and spice. Men might be pigs, but girls are mean little obliterators...

Our team was the "Geckos", with Hulk-green jerseys and tempers to match. I mean, look at me: I'm a thorough-bred killing machine...

 We had a double-coach system, in which a couple of local fathers were both yelling at us from the sidelines in their "unintentionally" matching Nike track suits. We were one of the "bottom-of-the-barrel" teams in the league, so that meant almost every team we played CLOBBERED us; but you'd be a fool to say we didn't have the proper girls' soccer mentality:

You can't really say we weren't aggressive and scary at times, either. A few of the girls on our team probably ate ground beef injected with growth hormones (being that they were six-foot-three at thirteen and able to put anyone's lights out if they felt like it). In every game, we had to "take-a-knee" at least twice: everything from bloody-noses to compound fractures, and there was NEVER mercy. Chicks aren't afraid to kick if you're down...

We girls don't have much sense of honor in violence. Before I joined the Geckos, I studied my friend Lid's team and saw that boy's have a better sense of honor on the field. 

With boys, aggression is greedily conserved for the game, and there are rarely hissy-fits in a loss. It's not the same with chicks...

One of my favorite parts of soccer was when girls did something called "chopping trees", an illegal move which involved the players intentionally kicking another player's shins as hard as possible until they either tripped or fell over in so much pain that they were forced to sacrifice the ball to the assaulting party. My position was always either defense or mid-field, meaning my "trees" were "chopped" A LOT. Oh yeah, and shin-guards are a pathetic placebo: when spiky, p'leather clubs of death are being thrown at you with the entire weight of the player behind them, one 1/8th inch of plastic and cotton isn't going to do you much good. 

All the quips about "improving my confidence" and "creating a sense of sports-community" were quickly lost on my brain. In reality, the only long-term upside of girl's soccer was that, thanks to "tree chopping", I now have an above-normal ability to withstand a beating on my shins. I can freak some people out by letting them punch the crap out of my shins before I will feel any actual PAIN. It's really only coffee tables that get me anymore. 

In the dark. 

When I come home late at night. 

Seriously, those things have conscious abilities to ambush, I'm sure of it...

- The JSP