Note: It might take a little bit to get to the actual soccer in this piece, but I promise it will tie together. Or maybe I just want to write about a TV show that I miss.
Memories are strange. They come in different forms: photographic snapshots, videos with or without sound and finally feelings/sensations. My first snapshot is of my parents sitting on the front porch of the second house I lived at. I was two at the time. The first video memory I have is of riding my Thunderbike in my neighborhood, the wheels making a gravel-filled racket, the sound echoing around Middle Tennessee suburbia. This would have been when I was four or five. And then when I was six, I had my first memory that seemed “real.”
I’m standing on the sidelines of a soccer field, the shin guards and socks rubbing against my legs, grass in my shoes. It’s March in Middle Tennessee, that weird temperature where it’s not really cold until you think about it, and then you shiver. Saturday morning, overcast. The Caprisun and off-brand Chips Ahoy! are in a cooler on the parents’ side of the field. Goals were being missed, passes were being flunked and 13-year old referees were letting the power of bossing around others go to their heads.
But I wasn’t thinking about soccer.
I was daydreaming of Galidor: Defenders of the Outer Dimension, the show that aired on Fox Kids for six months before being canceled in what I can only describe as a modern incarnation of the book of Job. The show was centered on an average guy––Nick Bluetooth–– and his quest to find his father in a mysterious parallel universe or something like that. He is traveling with his very platonic friend, Allegra Zane, no relation to the antihistamine Fexofenadine. The show was in some way sponsored by the LEGO company, or at least had an exclusive contract with them to produce toys.
The unique bit of Galidor was this strange superpower that certain people had: glinching. When you glinch, you can change a body part, e.g. get a jet wing for an arm or a kangaroo foot. Ok, that sounds stupid, but you can go watch an episode of the show on YouTube. It’s really fricken cool.
Anyways, every Saturday morning of that year, I would watch Galidor on my parents’ TV. This was before flatscreens (or at least before we had one), so it was a big box of a TV, one that crackled and gave off a static shock when it turned on. I was having a great time watching the show every weekend, but then was rudely awakened to the fact that not every Saturday is fun, and some Saturdays are spent getting exercise that you never wanted in the first place, playing a sport that you won’t be good at for at least half a decade. The essay on making your kids play sports is forthcoming, but I think I’ve rambled enough already in this piece.
Back to my first “real” memory: I’m standing there on the sidelines, watching my team lose, but the only thing I really care about is Galidor: Defenders of the Outer Dimension, which is currently being recorded onto a VHS, which I’ll be able to watch as soon as I get home. And I’m thinking about how little I want to be at the soccer game.
Whenever someone talks about the soccer team at Union, the majority of people know about as much about it as they know about Galidor, rather pathetic considering what a flop the show was. On Friday night, the Union University Bulldogs and Lady Bulldogs faced off against Delta State, and for once, people actually showed up. Looking at the season-long stats for the Lady Bulldogs, the average home game brings out 196 people, while the game Friday brought in 247 attendees. The men’s game brought out 623, quite a bit more than their average 333. Question regarding the gender dynamics of the university: why are we supporting the male game with 2.5x the crowd? I don’t know if that’s SOP at most schools, but regardless, it looks problematic.
I’m just as guilty of not going to Lady Bulldog games as anyone else. In fact, this weekend, I was out of town and missed both games. Really, the sports culture on this campus is weak, and I wish I knew why. The only games that people have really showed up to during my four years at Union were the women’s basketball playoffs this last spring. And honestly, most of those people showed up for the Dub bobbleheads.
The Lady Bulldogs went down Friday, and few people were there to cheer on their friends, classmates and students. 4-0 is not an easy score to swallow, and it’s even harder when your bleachers are emptier than they should be. The men’s team did a little better, pulling out a 1-1 tie after 2 OTs, but again, the outcome might have been different if people consistently filled the stadiums.
This isn’t a piece with a solution in mind. I don’t usually want to go to soccer, basketball, baseball, volleyball or softball matches, just like most of the student body, and I don’t know why that is. If I had to choose one or the other, I think I would rather go to an intramural game and watch a bunch of non-athletic kids beat up a bunch of other non-athletic kids. Maybe that’s because I will probably know some of the people in intramurals, where the sports community at Union is fairly insular, with most of the athletes so busy with working out, training, etc. that they can barely make it out of their dorm except to eat and study.
There are some serious problems with the sports culture at Union, but one way to remedy some of the problems is to get attendance higher at games, especially when the games are only a few hundred yards from the student dorms. Galidor may be gone forever, but Union sports can easily come back. We just have to go to games and cheer.
Photo by Tamara Friesen
