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We loved managing and coaching soccer teams and even the most athletically-challenged child can play. It isn’t like baseball where they go to bat – all alone - and strike out. Instead, young soccer players get so many chances to get their foot on the ball, especially in youth soccer where the team can swarm together around the field like a beehive. Keith would smile when he’d spot a young girl more interested in a little tiny flower growing on the field instead of paying attention to the game. She was having fun!
When I played on adult teams - mostly over-30 women’s indoor soccer, I’d constantly remind my teammates that nobody was getting paid and we all had to get to work the next day, so let’s be careful out there. It needs to be fun. At that time, there were no professional women’s teams but today that has all changed. The world of women’s professional soccer, especially the NWSL is exciting and lucrative for some of the players and owners. It is still called soccer in this country instead of football like the rest of the world, but it is fun. One of my favorite scenes in Ted Lasso is when the new player, Dani Rojas screams “Football is Life!” But for me, writing is life.
My latest script, AimMe Coach, is almost done. It was originally a one-hour dramedy like Ted Lasso called Aim Me, but I worked with an amazing mentor – Kris Crenwelge as part of the Native American Media Alliance fellowship that I won. She is a staff writer on True Lies and is currently in the Native American showrunner fellowship. Kris suggested that I cut out half of the characters and make it a network half-hour comedy. That meant removing half of what writers like to call “their darlings.” Gosh, that was hard since I killed off my main character. But surprisingly, that left the hero to be my Native American character, Suby Mankiller, and back full circle to my granddaughters. My youngest and strongest is named Suby and is in the bottom left of this picture. She packs a lot of dynamite into her petite body.
This picture sort of brings everything full circle for me. I quit writing twenty years ago after graduating from UCLA’s screenwriting program when tragedy struck and Keith and I had four little granddaughters to help raise. I put my dreams on hold and had a new objective to earn enough money in the technology industry to support our daughter-in-law getting certified as a teacher and those amazing little girls.
I had also taken a bad hit in my right eye with a soccer ball and had a partially detached retina and poor vision to contend with. But with big monitors and dozens of surgeries, I do pretty well – just don’t ask me to drive at night! My lack of depth perception makes playing sports difficult, so I walk a lot instead, at least a 5K a day and lots of yoga.
For me, writing is life – I feel like Dani Rojas, each morning – excited to get up and write, write, write. If you want to see my YouTube about Aim Me (the hour-long version) here’s the link and I hope to have the ½ version done soon. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx_8Ja4anZU7427aV5A98VQUPYtmdfWJc
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