Feet

Chapter 4

It took her a while to proses what we were saying, "You girls are so young. Are you sure you want to do this?"

Lucy butted in, "We are in our twenties and we already made a team. All we need is a good coach and Grace recommended you. She said you would say yes but, I guess not."

"I will be your coach. When do I start?"

"Now would be nice." I had to say it before Lucy did so I could say it sweetly.

Lucy then asked, "Do you really know how soccer works and have you ever coached?"

"Yes, I do know how it works but women aren't allowed to coach."

"Thank you for being our coach. We have practice Friday, Saturday, and Sunday behind the church."

She coached us from that point on. Somehow, the word spread that there were women's soccer players and we received a letter saying,

Dear girls,

We have decided to allow women to play the game of soccer. We have read in countless newspapers of your success with recruiting young women to play soccer. It would be our pleasure to welcome your team to the first ever professional women's soccer games. Women's teams from around the world will be participating in these games. Here is how they work. We will have sixteen teams. Each team is paired up with another team. That means, there will be eight games going on. If you lose, you are disqualified, if you forfeit, the other team wins by default. Then, the eight teams that won will have one week off just so that they can practice. Then, like before they will be paired up with another team. There will be four games. Four teams will go home and four will remain. Then the same repeats until there are only two teams remaining.  These two teams play in Championship, and the winner will be crowned the first "Young Women's Futbol Champions". The rules of the game are as follows. Where your team uniform that will be sent to you, no intentional harm to another player, and you only have sixty minutes to play. Which ever team has more goals wins. We will hold these games in London, England. We will send the schedule, rules, and exact location. I forgot to mention that the games will be held at different times in the day that way we can have more space for fans.

Thank you and we hope you participate,

Susan Lilies, Maggie Miles, and the referees.

When I got the letter, I ran straight to Lucy's little town house. I knocked on the door. She answered and I gave her the letter. She read it.

"Oh my lord! This is the best news I have ever gotten!" She said it with a big smile. I could tell she was happy since her feet were dancing and they never do that.

"We should go to our coach first right?"

"Right."

And with that, we told every teammates and our coach. When we told each of them the news, they would dance, cry, smile, jump. It was the best day in each of our lives. We all got our uniforms the next day. The shirt was white with a blue stripe across it that says, "United States of America". The pants were a really dark blue with red stripes on the sides and we all got blue socks with brand new red cleats with white and blue laces.

We packed all of our things and headed off to Sweden.

It was a long trip but we enjoyed every second of it. When we arrived, we were told to go to 419 futbal street. In Swedish, soccer means futbal. When we got to the little town house, we saw another letter about how we are playing at 10:00 am to play the game. That meant we should be ready to play.

We went to the field two hours early just to see how the other teams play. Then the announcer called, "Is United States and Germany ready?" No! We are versing Germany? I thought to myself.

"Yes." Both coaches said.

"Please take your side of the feild and give me one person from each team."

I went over to the referee. The other girl was hidden in a blanket. The referee said,

"Girls, Germany will have the ball first and in the second half the U.S will have the ball. There are two thirty minute halves. Understood? And remind your coaches that we are playing 11 verse 11. Go!"

With that I trotted over to my team. I told my coach, "Germany will have the ball first and in the second half we will have the ball, there are two thirty minute halves, and they want to remind us that we are playing 11 verse 11."

"Thank you for the update, Grace."

"Is each team ready? Let the game begin!"