Through the eyes of middle-aged women, the intrinsic values of camaraderie, spirit, and motivation that are fundamental to team sports take on new meaning in Harvey Araton’s “Alive and Kicking.”
Soccer is the catalyst for a generation of women too old for Title IX but too young for the rocking chair. Araton documents a Montclaire, N.J. team of “soccer moms” through organization, injury, and the growing pains of being battered and invaded by younger athletes.
“Even before Mia and Brandi and Kristine were filling stadiums and scoring groundbreaking television ratings, my wife and her friends had an overwhelming sense that something was happening, and it wasn’t too late, they wanted in,” Araton contends. “Maybe their gravitating to the sport their children were playing was logical and inevitable. If it is true that the more we age, the closer we are to being childlike again, then why not soccer? Two shin guards. A pair of cleats. A ball. A field, marked by a few orange cones. It couldn’t be coincidence that they were choosing a sport that, no matter how big it grew, maintained its human dimensions.”
The problem with soccer books is that there are too many players to characterize. Araton could have narrowed down his characters and expanded his coaching and playing nuggets to reel in the hard core soccer fan.
Among the few insights offered on coaching teams of middle-aged women: “(women) are so damn good at bonding, and soccer’s the game where everyone needs each other, and that is the secret to happiness, if you believe in relationships more than you do in material things.”
“Rochelle piped up that Ellen was obviously smart enough to know the difference between a good play and a bad one, but (the coach) should understand that women — at least women of their generation — habitually needed to put a positive spin on things.”
“That,” she said, effectively settling the argument, “is how we stay married to men.”
Araton, a New York Times columnist, is just a little out of his niche with this book. It is painfully obvious when he leaves the comfort and flow of the Montclaire, N.J. setting to dabble on the West Coast and into some basketball leagues, that he is trying to stretch a nice magazine feature into a $25 hardback.
