Ponytails and Shoelaces

I wasn't going to be a "mom coach"

There is a particular earthy, autumnal aroma of mud and freshly cut grass that will always take me right back to the soccer fields of my youth. Those fields are where I made my closest childhood friends, where I learned that I could be strong and fast. Part of a team, united in a purpose that did not involve how we looked or who liked us, I felt confident and powerful in the swirling physical and emotional storm of adolescence.

So, while I want my daughter to choose her own path, ever since her first soccer camp at age three, I’ve hoped she would stick with it—and I’ve also looked forward to being her coach. Now she is six and finally on her first real soccer team, with uniforms and games and parent coaches. At the end of the registration form, I eagerly checked the “assistant coach” box because, to be honest, I did not want the responsibility of creating practice plans or hauling gear or managing logistics. My daily parenting life is already full of similar tasks. I wanted the luxury of just showing up.

As the initial emails circulated between the coaches—of which I am one of five and the only woman—I tried to keep my emails as brief and unemotional as the dads. To write short sentences and limit my exclamation points. I had vowed to myself to be the same as them, one of the dudes, because I feared they wouldn’t take me seriously if I behaved too much like a woman. If I ran/threw/kicked/emailed like a girl. But I couldn’t do it. I am who I am. I exclaimed! (I used parentheses.) I failed to blend in at the outset.

At our first practice, a toasty September evening, not a muddy field for miles, I laced up my daughter’s hot pink cleats and smoothed her hair into a high ponytail that would keep the wild wispies out of her eyes. I greeted the girls I already knew with high-fives and learned the names of those I didn’t. I accepted my nametag with delight, Coach Kaitlin scrawled in red permanent marker.

An hour later, I had joined the girls hopping on pretend pogo sticks as a warm-up, chased down balls that missed the goal, and helped run drills alongside the other coaches. I had also tied four shoelaces and fixed two ponytails, and on the way home, as my daughter jabbered about her school day, I scolded myself for this. Because out of five coaches, I was the one tending to shoelaces and ponytails. (In all fairness, the head coaches were quite busy running practice, organizing drills, setting up cones, and asking giggling girls to listen for the umpteenth time.) Once again, as with my emails, I’d already broken my vow to be just like the dads. I’d let myself down by being a stereotypical female caregiver. A mom coach.

The weekend before that first practice, I’d been on a walk with my daughter. Our neighborhood is full of clever political signs that make me smile and turn my stomach for what’s at stake. Cat Ladies for Kamala. Grab Him by the Ballot. Roe Roe Roe Your Vote. My daughter doesn’t understand these, but she points out Kamala’s name whenever she sees it.

“Can you believe we’ve had 46 presidents and they’ve all been men?” I asked her. “Kamala could be the first woman president ever.”

“But mommy, she will be the president, right?”

“Oh honey, I hope so.” I explained that it’s not for sure, that there will be an election and enough people have to vote for her.

“Who’s the other person they can vote for?” she asked.

With as much diplomacy as I could muster, I told her about Kamala’s opponent. I told her he didn’t make great choices as president. I paused before telling her the next thing, but decided I wanted her to know.

“He also doesn’t really like women,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “He doesn’t think they are as smart as men, or that they can do important jobs like being the president.”

Her little face twisted in emotion. “Are you sad?” I asked gently.

“No!” she said, stomping her sparkle pink Vans on the sidewalk. “I’m mad!” I am proud of her outrage. I also wish there existed no need for it.

For the next few days, I obsessed about the ponytails and shoelaces. I texted with girlfriends, turned it over and over while I walked my dog. There was a wrinkle in my self-deprecation, a deeper complexity I couldn’t smooth out until I finally recognized it: good old internalized misogyny. I have been culturally conditioned to hate my femaleness. To feel less than, or faulty, for not doing it like a man. Before I ever saw the team roster, I expected there might be more male coaches and knew it would be specifically important for my daughter and her friends to see a woman occupying leadership space on the soccer field. But then, when I showed up as a woman on the soccer field, noticing untied shoelaces and giving dribbling tips, I beat myself up for it. At first, I thought I was mad at myself about the shoelaces, but then I realized I was actually mad at myself for being mad at myself.

One very wise friend texted me this: For ages society told women that they had to grunt and lean in and wear pants to be taken seriously. You are demonstrating a different model of leadership, one that values care. What, after all, am I really hoping to show these girls, to show my daughter? That women can be leaders, we can be coaches, yes, but not that we have to be the same as men to be those things. That I will encourage them to hustle and I will also tie their shoelaces so they don’t trip hustling.

The day after the presidential debate—which my daughter begged to listen to on the radio driving to ballet so she could hear Kamala’s voice—we went to our second soccer practice. As a test, I ignored several untied shoelaces and only fixed my daughter’s ponytail. Even though I was trying to embrace my “different model of leadership,” I just wanted to see what would happen. And what happened was that those shoelaces remained untied for the entire practice. This is not a man slam. I love the dad coaches, how they’re out here teaching their daughters they can be strong and fast, just like my own dad coach did when I was six years old, showing me he believed in me. 

But here’s what also happened at that practice. During a water break, I was chatting with one of the head coaches, who is knowledgeable and gentle and very attuned to 6-year-old girls. (For his icebreaker the first practice, he’d asked the team to introduce themselves and share their favorite ice cream flavor. He went first: “Mine is chicken ice cream!” The girls erupted into squeals of hilarity, instantly won over.)

“Have you done this before?” I asked him as he set up cones for scrimmage. “You seem like a natural.”

He nodded. “Yeah, but it was a while ago.”

“You’re doing a great job,” I said. I wanted him to know that I saw the folded-up practice plan he pulled out of his pocket after each drill, the thought he put into the inspirational word of the week, the fact that he knew the girls’ birthdays and had the team sing before practice.

“Well thanks,” he shrugged. “And hey, I wanted to thank you for being good at the stuff I’m not so good at, you know, like fixing ponytails.”

I shrugged too, as if to also say no problem, but I felt a simultaneous, conflicting wave of validation and disappointment. Validated to be seen and appreciated. Disappointed to not be seen and appreciated for something else. Something less female.

The following week, I ended my silent shoelace strike. Another coach tied a shoelace, but mostly it was because I just could not resist an undone lace. I am who I am. And who I am, I realize as I kneel down for a double-knot, is a coach who enjoys tying shoelaces. Who in fact loves it. In that brief moment crouched before one of those girls, I am building her trust. I am here on this field for her—to teach her, believe in her, and care for her.

At games I am either on the sideline helping to keep track of substitutions or on the field refereeing—which means I hold the power of the whistle (truly a thrill) and my daughter gives me hugs in the middle of the game instead of running after the ball. My daughter loves it when I ref, but she is not satisfied. She wants more.

“When are you going to be head coach, mommy?” she asks me after practice one evening.

As it turns out, there is a game coming up that both head coaches will miss. When I tell her, she lets out a triumphant whoop.

“So you’ll be the head coach?” she presses.

“Yeah, I guess so!” I say. “Why do you want me to be the head coach so bad?

Her answer is quick and simple. “Because I want you to tell everyone what to do.”

Does my daughter subconsciously want to see a woman in charge? It may have nothing to do with gender, she would probably feel the same way about her dad being head coach. Maybe she just craves power by association—but maybe, also, seeing me as a leader helps her imagine it for herself.

The big day arrives, my head coach debut. I run warm-ups and remind the team of their word of the week. But mostly it’s not that different. I still tie shoelaces, and when a girl taps my elbow and asks me to put her hair up, I whip a ponytail holder out of my fanny pack. “Whew,” one of the dad coaches says, “thanks for having a hair tie!” I shrug, and this time I really do mean no problem.

Soccer season ends a week before the election, and we finally get a glorious mud pit of a field. I didn’t use the word “misogyny” in the watered-down Trump description I gave my daughter. I hope before she ever learns that word—before she ever internalizes it—that she will see a woman elected president. A woman on the field telling everyone what to do, with skill and knowledge and care—and doing it, unapologetically, like a woman.

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