Football Caves

When my friend Dawn let me tag along to her indoor soccer league match, I pictured a brightly-lit gymnasium with colourful, conflicting markings on a smooth, shiney floor surrounded by dirty white walls.

Instead, I was led through a dark, narrow corridoor that lined a row of cages where teams of four played each other inside, on red astro turf, surrounded by red-brick walls. Their supporters and substitutes shouted awkwardly from outside. It was quite exciting. There was a boys’ match going on in one of the enclosures and they were pretty pumped up. The shouting and rattling of the metal made me imagine I was in an underground fighting arena or something. I was glad to be on the outside.

I was also happy just being a spectator when my poor friend and her team of thirty-somethings (The Double-Ds) got trashed by high-schoolers. There was one scary wall of a girl in the other team who everybody tried not to get destroyed by. And in the 15 or 20 minutes of each half, the female wall’s team never called in a substitute while Dawn’s team made substitutions every 5 to 10 minutes. I was so relieved for The Double-Ds when the entire ordeal was over.

Though there were some fantastic saves by DD’s goal keeper, the score was a painful 0-16 at the end. But according to Dawn, it was a pretty good result, considering their previous nil : 30-something defeats!