A eulogy to a man who taught more than sports

At times like these, words are inadequate. But they are all I have to give.

I played in four different soccer leagues from kindergarten through ninth grade. I played for eight different coaches, at least. I must have played in hundreds of games and gone to countless practices.

I remember my coaches' names and faces, and maybe even what I thought of them, but their actual words have faded away into the dim recesses of my memory.

Except for one.

At one practice, at a local park in Alexandria, Virginia, my coach sat our team down and told each of us the role we were to play in the next game. I was the center defender, mainly because I couldn't score if I had an open shot on goal.

After going through every teammate's individual role, Coach Smith turned to me and said, "And then there's Sara. She's our rock. She doesn't let anything get past her."

The words he said to me on that day have stuck with me all these years.

I never got the chance to tell him how much those words have meant to me.

Lieutenant Colonel Gary Smith, the father of one of my close high school friends and my soccer coach, was lost last Tuesday in the attack on the Pentagon.

Over the past week, I've realized that those words, so important to me, were wrong.

I wasn't the rock of that team.

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He was.

And now it's too late for me to give him back those words.

Mr. Smith had the difficult job of coaching us during our middle school years. Added to our general twelve-year-old-ishness was the fact we were a bunch of close friends who made it our goal to hound any adult who didn't take us seriously.

When the league gave us Pepto-Bismol pink uniforms with fluorescent socks, we merely named ourselves the "Energizer Bunnies" and kept on going.

Two seasons later, when we were rewarded with ugly green jerseys, we saw no problem — we called ourselves the "Fighting Broccoli."

We thought we were hilarious. I'm sure we were an utter pain.

But Mr. Smith didn't seem to mind. He remained on the sideline, calm in the face of the chaos that each practice must have been.

Dealing with a team which must have had two girls not speaking to each other while another two were braiding each others' hair would have strained the patience of a lesser man.

But Mr. Smith came every day from work to the practice field, and stood there, calling out drills in his uniform.

We spent most of our time hoping desperately to beat our rival team, full of girls that we went to school with. I don't think we ever did.

But Mr. Smith wasn't the kind of coach who focused only on winning. To tell the truth, my memories of him have very little to do with the actual game of soccer.

I remember how his uniform's hat sat perched precariously, never quite slipping off his scant head of hair.

I remember his smile, which he gave to us frequently.

I remember his voice, and how calming it was.

But mostly, I remember those words.

Mr. Smith was our rock.

He kept us steady through the struggles of junior high. And, most importantly, he never let anything, or anyone, slip past him and through the cracks. We were important to him, not as a team, but as girls he cared about.

And, even in the midst of jersey-color dramas and the focused rivalry with the better team, we knew that was what was really important.

In times like these, it is not only words that seem inadequate, but sports, too, seem frivolous and almost disrespectful.

Sports are not important. They are merely a distraction, and distraction is a luxury in times like these. Too many people have lost too much.

At the same time, sports can bring us together. They are inadequate, yes, but so is everything else right now.

We cannot use sports to forget what happened, but, in our inadequate way, perhaps we can honor the memory of those who lost their lives — soccer coaches, Little League umpires, former high school athletes and so many others — by trying to carry on with life, full of its myriad of distractions, now that they are gone.

For my part, I know that I will look back and remember Coach Smith whenever I watch a soccer game.

These words cannot begin to broach the depths of pain that our country is feeling now, but sometimes words are all that we have to give.

When I called her to offer my words of condolence, my friend told me that her father cut out all the articles that I wrote for a local paper this summer so that she could read them when she returned from Europe.

Coach Smith won't be able to cut this article out, but I hope that these inadequate words that I offer up here can reach him.

I want him to know how much his words, so much more than adequate, meant to me.