After crossing paths with his childhood soccer coach, Aaron discovers he has more in common with Gordon Bombay, the fictional character from Mighty Ducks, than he ever imagined.
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Story created & performed by: Aaron Calafato
Senior Audio Engineer: Ken Wendt
Additional vocals: Cori Birce
Art: Pete Whitehead
Original Music: thomas j. duke
Transcript
Aaron Calafato
"I love 'The Mighty Ducks,' one of my favorite movies growing up, but I could never have predicted that the fictional life of Coach Gordon Bombay, played exquisitely by Emilio Estevez, and his childhood pee-wee hockey coach, the infamous Jack Riley, would not only parallel my own life but manifest in a very awkward and cringy real-life situation that just happened to me not too long ago. Come with me on this journey right after the music."
Cori Birce
"You're listening to 7 Minute Stories with Aaron Calafato. This is season 4."
Aaron Calafato
"Even though I loved 'The Mighty Ducks,' professional hockey wasn't my thing; we didn't have an NHL team in Cleveland. So it was soccer for me all the way. Couple of reasons for this. My dad was a professional-grade soccer player, collegiate soccer player, still holds records, practiced with the US Olympic team. Amazing. He was a winger. I ended up learning from the best; I was a striker, a center forward. So I took all the glory, showed up for the moment, scored all the goals, and did all the celebrations. I loved the game.
My mom was a teacher at a university, and she taught English to international students. And she had a student named Ugo, from Argentina. Hugo came over one day and said, 'Hey, I know you love soccer. I'm going to give you this.' It was a VHS tape with highlights. It's like 2 hours long. The YouTube before YouTube of Maradona's highlights, the great attacking midfielder who played on the Argentinian national team. These were the highlights from his amazing World Cup in 1986 that Argentina won in Mexico. I watched this. I'm like, 'This guy's a magician.'
And it only fueled me to practice harder and play more. I got really good to the point where I was playing traveling soccer. To play on this Mighty Ducks metaphor, think of travel soccer, like any travel sport, like joining the Hawks coached by Jack Riley in 'The Mighty Ducks.' It's an elite experience, only the best of the best. I had to try out and I made the A team with some of the best players in the city.
Now here's the thing with travel soccer. And I think this also applies to travel sports in general. They're weird. Let me check myself. In the best case scenario to cover those bases, they're great. In the worst case scenario, it's a nightmare and it has nothing to do with the kids. For the most part, the nightmarish scenario only exists because of the adults, the parents, and the coaches. As sports get more competitive, adults start getting weirder. Things from work, frustrations at home, dreams not realized. This emotional hodgepodge of stuff from life starts coming through in the games. And if it's taken too far, you get Jack Riley in the Hawks.
You get these strange experiences where you have these kids who are just driven into the ground and where winning is the most important thing that matters. Get it. It's important. But you can't lose sight of what's also important, which is the human beings on the field and the lessons we can learn from this very real scenario, which is there are going to be players that are better than others. There are going to be players that have different skill sets than others.
And let's figure out a way to mold that to put it together so we can win as a team. Now one of the other things that happens with travel sports is politics. See, usually in professional sports, the best player, best skill set gets to start. It's not always that way in the intermediate levels. Oftentimes, it's which parent has the money to buy jerseys for the team. It's the networking part of it.
It's who knows the coach and who's grabbing a beer afterwards. And look, this may sound like unresolved issues. It might be, but kids have clarity and I knew at the time things didn't always feel right on my team in the sense that there were players who were playing a lot more minutes than others who are clearly more skilled, but they were playing because there was some sort of involvement or some sort of pay-to-play aspect. Look, not accusatory. It's just what it is.
And I saw over the years my minutes and my experience going down, not because I wasn't productive, but for some of these reasons. And I started to get frustrated. Now I had this coach. I called him Coach T. Now look. He wasn't Jack Riley. He wasn't oppressive. In fact, as a soccer coach, to be honest with you, he kinda had that American style of soccer mentality. Like, let's just play heavy defense. Let's play not to lose.
Let's go for the tie. Let's go for the draw. And I was a very aggressive player. And so I think philosophically, we disagreed in that way. And then you combine all the weirdness of travel sports. Next thing I know at the most important year of my life as I'm trying to get ready for high school and the next level after that, he starts benching me. And for whatever reason, I didn't take it well. And I had sort of a blow up with him. And when that happened, I started seeing the field less and less, and I let it impact me in such a way that I shouldn't have. I became Gordon Pompe.
I got angry. I was destructive. I quit soccer altogether. And I regret that decision, but here's the thing. It doesn't end there. Hang tight. I'm closing. Right after I quit, I was feeling bad. I'm in my room depressed, and there's this picture of our team. All my friends that I played with, And then there's Coach T in the picture, and I get so angry that I scratch out his face with the tip of a pencil, just scratch it out.
Then maybe it's the Catholic leanings in my upbringing, but I felt guilty immediately afterwards. And so I actually drew on the picture, a little arrow that said sorry, and I tried to draw his face to the side. It was a sad attempt at atonement, but the years went on. The frustration faded away. Lesson learned until just this past year.
My bonus son, gee, I'm picking him up from school. And he gets in the car. He points out the window. He goes, 'Hey, that's our substitute teacher for the week.' And I look out the window and it's a freaking Coach T.
My stomach dropped. And I said, 'You know what? Let's go home.' I almost felt like I had to run away. I got scared. Like, I was thirteen years old again. But then at home, I thought about this atonement piece and I talked to G and I said, 'Listen, buddy, when you go back tomorrow, can you tell Coach T that you're my son and that I hope he's doing well?' He does. The next day I pick him up and I said, 'G, what did Coach T say?' He said, 'Well, it was weird He said, oh, yeah.
I remember Aaron. He was so mad at me. Tell him I said, hi.' Now listen. I know this is a kid filtering this, but I trust my son And I'm gonna be honest with you Coach T. That sounds a little bit like Jack Riley's line in the mighty ducks where he says to Gordon Pompey, 'Bamba, you're not even a has-been. You're a never was.' And you know what Coach T? The first thing that came to my mind when my son told me that was a line from Coach Gordon Bombay from the mighty ducks. To think.
I wasted all these years worrying about what you thought. And if there's ever a showdown on the soccer field, I don't play for your team anymore. I got my own family. I got my own team. And remember, Duck's fly together. Duck's freaking fly together. We'll talk to you next week."
Cori Birce
"7 Minute Stories created and performed by Aaron Calafato. Our senior audio engineer is Ken Went. Our resident artist is Pete Whitehead, Original music by TJ Duke. If you or your company needs help starting a podcast, Aaron and Ken's company, Valley View does just that. Reach out to them at Valley View.fm.
Special thanks to our partners at Evergreen Podcasts, and I'm Cori Birce. Make sure to tune in next week for another story."
