pickup soccer

-
I've played soccer for as long as I can remember, and have come to appreciate it's international nickname, The Beautiful Game. My favorite setting is a pickup game - a random group of players on a borrowed field, who come together from across the globe. Some days I'm sure it's the most diverse gathering in the city.

We pass a ball around at first, and it's clear that we've loved the game for a long time - we're dancing, grinning, showing off new tricks.

When the game begins, our movements take on a new urgency - we're following instincts, we're quick, focused, clever, deceptive, graceful. We're communicating, sizing each other up, testing each other. There's strategy, teamwork, synchronicity, maybe even heroics.

At times it gets ugly... and fiercely competitive. We go from joy to pain to anger and back again. We start to foul each other more, we argue, we teach each other words in new languages. It's clear that something important is at stake.

At other times it can be profoundly cooperative, with its precise passing and graceful teamwork. Most fans love to see skilled players, with their death-defying bicycle kicks and clairvoyant saves, but they also love creative teamwork, with surprise give-and-go's and one-touch passes.

Over the years I've come to wonder if pickup soccer's balance of competition and cooperation is becoming increasingly rare in our society. That's what got me started on all this.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

competing thoughts on wgbh

-
Our seven-minute documentary Competing Thoughts is one of the films featured in the WGBH Lab Showcase. The film looks at healthy and less healthy forms of competition, and offers some alternatives. More about the people and subjects in the film: Alfie Kohn's book, No Contest: The Case Against Competition (1986, 1992, re-released in 2006). Terry Orlick's book, Cooperative Games and Sports (2006). David and Roger Johnson's work on Cooperative Learning at the University of Minnesota. Robert Pollin  is a Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Greg Hamilton's great documentary, Mystic Ball , about Myanmar's non-competitive sport, Chinlone. Collective Copies history , which discusses the advantages of collectives. The Moosewood Collective , one of the most famous collectives in the US. Here's a good introduction to kinship, reciprocity, and mutualism . All of the music in the film is from Willie Bernstein's latest album, Bug Jam . Her...
Read more

chess

-
Image
I just played chess for the first time in a while with a friend of mine. Chess has a certain purity as a competitive game that has been revered for centuries - all strategy, they say. The opening ritual was familiar. We chatted about rules, strategy, experience. This was the pre-game. Then we took our places. We had one of those chess clocks to keep the game moving. He started it, and became my opponent. We were focused, strategic, invested, tense, relieved, unsure, sure. There were threats, escapes, mistakes, successes, gains, losses. It was exhilarating, like soccer. And again, something was at stake. I definitely wanted to win, and so did he - our faces and bodies were clear about this. It seemed we were either focused on attack, preparing for attack, or evading attack. There was something primeval about it.
Read more

film pitch

-
Here is the film pitch , description, and approach we submitted to WGBH for Competing Thoughts. Description This is the first in a series of video essays drawing from my research on competition. I'll use pickup soccer, a game I've enjoyed for 25 years, as a microcosm of competition in our increasingly global culture. A rare hub of race, class, and sometimes gender, pickup soccer is arguably one of the most diverse gatherings in Boston. And it strikes a rare balance between competition and cooperation. This sort of balance doesn't exist in other forms of competing I've experienced: in my family, school, workplace, and just about everywhere else. In this film I'll discuss the pros and cons of competition, and alternatives to it. Style or Approach My reflections on soccer and mixed feelings about competition will be the thematic center of the film. I'll weave in quotes, interviews, and audio from people on all sides of the debate: educators, economis...
Read more