One World, One Game

A few Saturdays ago, I played a game of pick-up soccer with my host brother, Vlad. It was the hardest that I’ve laughed since I’ve been in Ukraine (and the hardest work-out I’ve had since I’ve been here… a week later, and my muscles were still recovering. I’m getting too old for these games, but I wasn’t about to let one of my little students steal the ball from me behind on a breakaway… )
But Soccer is NO JOKE here in Ukraine. For these boys, it wasn’t even just a life or death game either…. It was more than that. So a few times, I thought I was surely going to be kicked out of the game for laughing. Honestly, I’m not sure if I was in more pain from laughing so hard or because of how hard they made me play. Still, I was just amazed how awesome these little 70 pound 10 year-olds were at soccer. Two other PCTs were playing with me and we were getting stuffed by these little kids and I couldn’t help but laugh.

Because Vlad is 10, it worked out that I was playing soccer with a bunch of boys around that age. Except, they don’t look like they were 10. The children in Ukraine are MUCH smaller than their counterparts in the US. So a 10 year-old boy really looks like he’s about 6 or 7. Girls of that age would look like about 4. Anyway, there was this one little boy named Serioge who was the goalie for Vlad’s team. I swear he looked like he just came out of diapers. Little Serioge was blocking shots left and right and the sheer unexpected element of his performance just made me want to die laughing (picture a 30 pound kid blocking shots like _____). Eventually, some older boys from the high school came and played with us. Ain’t nothin’ but a thang for Serioge, he blocked their shots, too. (After the game, I found out that Serioge had just turned five a few months ago.) … these kids are unreal. I guess if you play soccer 8 out of 12 waking hours everyday, you’re bound to be pretty amazing.

Anyway, my second favorite kid was Anton. Anton was about 8/9, kind of chubby, and the BOSS. If the ball came to you, after your first touch… you could hear Anton repeatedly scream “PPAAAAAASSSSSSSSS” from the other end of the field. He was my team’s cherry-picker, which was just funny in itself. But you could Anton’s voice echo all over Boguslav, I didn’t know whether to be scared for my life or laugh at his extreme urgency... (of course, I laughed). Anyway, Anton and a few of those boys are in my English class- I now have major street cred. in the classroom especially after I scored a few goals.

Moments like these make me love Ukraine more than I usually do. I hope I can play again next weekend if the weather is good… as long as Serioge is on my team.