stepped forward, beginning to run. His cleats dug into the ground, grass clumps flying behind him. I dug my own feet in, moving one step to the right and taking a leap—it was a complete gamble, a guessing game. I launched into the air, my body flat-out four feet off the ground. My hands stretched out. The ball was launching through the air, coming off his foot like a rocket. The crowd’s noise rose.
And my hands closed around the ball.
I hit the ground, rolling away with it between my hands. The crowd exploded—all kinds of noises, catcalls, jeers and mocking, aimed mostly at their own players instead of us. I’d earned their respect, and I was thankful we had made friends instead of enemies.
* * *
I played hard, tough and aggressive. But my reputation for having no enemies on the field, a seemingly contradictory puzzle, may have saved my skin during a rather tense game.
I was the South-American misfit on a Czechoslovakian-owned team named Tatra with Canadian-born and Scottish imports. During those years the ethnic presence was far greater than it is today. The level of rivalry was intense, especially given that this was Premiere soccer, not national matches. We were playing the Portuguese, a team that stayed very true to its ethnic boundaries. When two players of even skill were available, they would take the one who was Portuguese. Every time. Not only was the rivalry rather intense, but they happened to have very devoted fans. The games could get rough, especially a game as important as this one.
The field at Alexander Park was well-kept, the changing rooms on the far side from me. The bleachers were on both sides, wide banks that sat around two thousand. And today, about 5 percent of those fans were ours. The other 95 percent were for the Portuguese, and they liked to make it obvious.
The game had been close and intense. On the field, I could see everything that was happening. I never had my back to the play, so everything unfolded in front of me. Our forward was streaking up the right side, the ball on his feet like it had been glued there. He stopped on a dime, turning to cut inside. The defensive player got in his way, hacking at the ball. They ran into each other, the ball dribbling away from both of them. The whistle blew—a foul had been called. The Portuguese player, clearly not happy with what had just happened, spat at our player.
Our Scottish contingent, not being shy to express their opinion of things, retaliated. With a head-butt filled with anger our player knocked the Portuguese player onto his backside. Immediately there was an uproar. The crowd surged with anger and—if they had seen the spitting incident they clearly didn’t care—began to reach a boiling point. Our players were getting tangled up with theirs, faces red and veins protruding from necks as everyone was yelling. There was clearly a fight beginning on the field, and there was nothing stopping the two thousand Portuguese from storming the field—and storm they did. Like a tidal wave crashing onto shore they hit the grass, anger written all over their faces in plain Portuguese.
The odds for our team had majorly shifted, and my players realized it. With the realization that the game was over, they sprinted for the change rooms. The Portuguese were still yelling, tempers at a rolling boil. The crowd had reached the field now, yelling with their fists in the air. My team made it to the changing room, locking themselves in. They were safe.
I was still on the far side of the field. There was a fence behind me, and bailing over it was an option. I stood in my penalty box, asking myself, What the heck am I supposed to do? The crowd was livid, the game definitely over. And I was all alone, a South-American misfit representing a Scottish contingent that had ticked off two thousand Portuguese. Things weren’t looking good for me.
The crowd wasn’t getting any calmer, so I decided that I’d better make my move sooner rather than later. Besides, I didn’t want to sit out on the field for an hour and wait for them to notice that I was there. I left my penalty box—my little island of safety—and walked towards the mob. Still yelling, still angry. When I got within a dozen feet, those nearest me noticed me there. I kept walking—directly at them.
They parted like the Red Sea, and I walked right through. I felt a little like Jesus in Luke 4, a story that suddenly became abundantly real to me. When I walked, they moved to make space for me. People reached out to touch me but not out of anger. I got pats on the back, cheers, high-fives.
“Good game,” one said.
“Well played,” another added.
“Thanks for being a great player.”
“That was a great save!”
“Way to go!”
I walked out the other side, unscathed and completely in one piece. My reputation had preceded me—literally—and I was able to walk through an angry mob of very charged fans.
My team opened the door to the change room when I told them who it was, and I got a chance to see the surprise on their faces before the door slammed shut behind me, the lock clicking into place. Outside, the anger had come to the surface once more, and the Portuguese began banging on the side of the trailer, throwing rocks onto the top and at the sides.
We were hushed in silence, though our atmosphere was anything but silent, for about an hour, until the police finally arrived to escort us from the scene. Making friends instead of enemies had paid off for me—in a big way.
* * *
Dad, when he was a teenager, had swum across one of the major rivers in Russia and almost drowned. Though it wouldn’t have served any practical type of purpose, he understood, just like many athletes do, the drive to achieve and accomplish. If he had grown up in other circumstances, where he could run for fun instead of to save his life, he would have understood better the intensity with which I approached soccer and sport.
On the other hand, Mom didn’t understand my drive one bit. She had always had the idea that a human heart was only given a certain amount of beats to take it from birth to death. If you raised your heart rate, you were shortening your life. In other words, why do something that required energy if you didn’t need to? If the life you had (like we had found in Canada) could allow you to sit on the couch when you weren’t working, then why would you be running around a grass field chasing a ball?
They had no idea what I had gotten myself into or, especially, at just what level I was playing soccer. After I convinced them to come to one game (and they came to only one), Mom had a few comments. Looking a little concerned, she met me after I came out of the change room.
“Arvid, how come they didn’t give you the ball very often? That was not very nice of them.
“And when they gave it to you they would kick it so hard it was difficult for you to even get it!
“Then again, it was nice of them to have that mesh behind you so when you missed the ball you didn’t have to run far to get it.
“And by the way…” She was being motherly now, telling me just how to behave. “You should play nicer. Stop taking the ball away from other people.”
* * *
I was on the cusp of moving up in the soccer world.
“Loewen brilliant in defeat,” the headlines read.
We had played a team called Hibernia, a team from the Premiere league in Scotland. The game was in front of 6,000 fans, and we got our egos handed to us on a platter, losing 6–0. But the score didn’t adequately reflect just how one-sided the game had been. The attacks were hitting me like rain, coming down
