Soccer Dad Offers Humor, Advice for Coaching Up a Talented Player
by William Meiners
In the grand scheme of things, soccer is an acquired taste for most Americans. At least over the last 50 years. It’s relatively easy to assemble marauding herds of cleated and shin-protected 3- and 4-year-olds chasing a single ball with single-minded hopes for goal-scoring glory. With coaches and parents all shouting the same supportive advice, “Spread out!” it’s all very cute. Up until one kid, seemingly on standby on the pitch, takes a swiftly kicked ball off the forehead.
If you are not in lockstep with every facet of the World Cup taking place in North America this summer, you’d get no grief from me. I appreciate the traveling traditions of the fans, especially the thought of Scots drinking Boston dry. Just as I marvel at the endurance and athleticism of soccer players. Yet other than a couple of middle school, non-scoring years in short pants, followed by some fun playing in an “over 30” Indy indoor league (then in my late 20s), it’s just not my game.
Soccer wasn’t David Murray’s game growing up in Ohio either. He and Christie Bosch, once girlfriend, later wife, moved to Chicago in the early 1990s primarily “because of Wrigley Field,” he told me in early May before the ivy had even reached its lushest green.
“I just couldn’t believe there was this ballpark in the middle of a neighborhood,” he said. “It just lit my imagination in a way. I also knew I was going to be a writer and needed to get to a bigger market. I don’t think I had the guts for New York.”
Their daughter Scout, born in 2003 and named — perhaps in equal parts — for Harper Lee’s iconic character from To Kill a Mockingbird and Murray’s classic International Harvester Scout, would soon make the world’s most popular sport central to their lives. Her footwork, demonstrated by a knack for dribbling around towheaded boys and frequent goal scoring, did more than raise shouts of “Goal!” in city parks. It raised questions. How good could Scout be? It also attracted advice, much of it unsolicited to parents still learning the game.
Scout Murray, Team Celery.
In his book, Soccer Dad (Disruption Books), released in April to coincide with Scout’s graduation from Ohio University, Murray recounts the family’s soccer journey. From playing in a league with teams named for vegetables (Celery won every game, and most of them weren’t very close, he writes.) to travel squads to her high-intensity days with the Ohio Bobcats as a D-I athlete.
Murray said the idea to write about it all didn’t come until Scout headed off to college. On that first recruiting trip, her eventual coach called her a “well-kept secret,” someone he hoped would stay under the radar of other programs. She did, accepting that lone offer to play in Athens.
With their only child out of the house, Murray said he suddenly felt like he’d been gifted another four or five hours a day, even as they stayed in daily contact with Scout. The writing rhythm came quickly, getting those first goals on paper, capturing the know-it-all parents in sidelined lawn chairs, and wrestling with decisions over how to guide a talented kid.
Early in the book, Murray writes, “I was almost studious in my soccer ignorance, which I sensed might be my greatest strength as a soccer dad.”
I think he’s right about that. Just as her freshman year kicked off her college career, Murray looked back nearly two decades to gain perspective. There’s no shiny coat of revisionist history of the carefree road taken to a D-I scholarship. Instead, Murray writes about what they did not know, or what they could have done differently, as a family that was never maniacal about soccer. Readers, with or without athletic offspring, will find both good humor and an honest take on Scout’s path.
A star on her high school team and on middling travel leagues in Chicago, Scout might have improved her game by playing on elite travel teams in the suburbs. “I always relied on her coaches to tell us the truth,” Murray said. “They were always saying, ‘You’re D-I material.’ They just didn’t tell us that she was in the wrong league.”
Through it all, Murray shares the experience of working with personal coaches, cheering on Scout as one of the best players at less competitive levels, and a summer road trip to visit colleges. There’s a father-daughter story here, plus the family’s story, that only intensifies with the competition in the Mid-American Conference.
For all her talent, Scout’s confidence sometimes faltered throughout her career. The best of times could be literal highlights, including a game-winning goal against Bowling Green that made SportsCenter’s Top 10 plays. That goal was part of her MVP performance in the MAC tournament as a sophomore. The following fall, however, with her playing time reduced, Scout’s Facetime talks with her parents often revolved around frustrations. Her college coach, unnamed in Murray’s book, could be highly intense and critical of athletes. Coaching a player up perhaps not his strong suit — and perhaps not that of most college coaches.
Scout in Bobcat celebration.
Soccer Dad ends heading into Scout’s senior season. Intentional beyond her graduation, Murray did not want the book to affect her playing time or anything else regarding the team. With the uncertainty of that final fall season, Scout and her parents probably had “the same conversation 25 times.”
“She had a great senior spring,” Murray said. “She worked out like crazy, trying to make herself as good as she could be to score 30 goals and win the national championship. But we understood that none of that’s guaranteed and maybe it’s even a long shot.”
Though he thinks the book ended on the right note after her junior year, Murray believes a “chapter 13,” including details of a 2025 season that ended with a losing record, could spawn good conversations. Maybe those talks take place in a podcast that include Murray, Scout, and her college coach, who seems game for it. To address the cliffhanger of her senior year, he recently wrote “Soccer Dad, Postscript: How to Make an Ending Happy.”
“I am looking forward to a year or two of having people react to the book,” Murray said. “Not just sports parents, but parents in general.”
Based on experiential knowledge, Murray ends the book with his own parenting advice. He prefaces that counsel in the conclusion in typical good wit and self-deprecation, writing …
Scout running the pitch.
I wrote Soccer Dad because I thought it might be helpful for other soccer dads,
soccer parents, sports parents, and parents of any kids wrapped up in serious
activities from a young age, to hear from one parent who staggered semi-mindfully
all the way through the process and came out the other side with the kid intact,
and reasonably happy.
It’s wisdom well earned. Without spoiling the book, I’ll share some of those one- and two-liners, each of which he expounds upon in the final pages.
- If you’re going to do travel sports, figure out the very best way to do it, and do it. (I reckon that’s true of a lot of things.)
- Trust your self-doubt, forgive yourself your mistakes.
- Give coaches advice on how to coach your kid — for five minutes.
Murray told me his book is also about the larger importance of sports in our world. In fact, I write this on the same day millions worldwide will tune into a World Cup U.S.A.-Belgium matchup. At stake, even for folks who typically don’t watch the sport, is victory or loss for each nation, so something linked to national identities. Even with “our squad” stateside filled with numerous sons of immigrants. You could focus on the complications of compromise between FIFA, a corrupted organization, and the most corrupt presidency in the history of the United States. Or I suppose you could tune in for the pure love of the game.
Maybe that love of play has drained away. “Sports have gotten so intense, it’s not some casual fun thing anymore,” Murray said. “And so if we’re going to devote this much to it, we have to figure out what we’re doing.”
Looking even further down the road, Murray imagines conversations Scout might have with her own children. He said, “She might tell them, ‘Your mom was a really talented player who didn’t always know it.’ And because of that, Scout had some hard times.”
David and Scout Murray.
Although the happy ending, which leads to another new beginning with graduate school in Chicago (studying psychology) and the lifelong sisters she met as college teammates, marks just the first few chapters of Scout’s life. And in a first-page “disclaimer and dedication,” Murray writes, “First, my daughter Scout, twenty-one years old at this writing, has read and approved every word in Soccer Dad.”
High praise for a parent and a writer. Well done, David Murray.
David Murray is the author of several books, including Soccer Dad and An Effort to Understand: Hearing One Another (and Ourselves) in a Nation Cracked in Half. He is an award-winning journalist whose writing on sports and other subjects has appeared in The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Atlantic, and many other publications.
William Meiners is the editor of Sport Literate.