The Angry Divorced Father

In the Lacrosse Semi-Finals, Hermes faced Conquistador at the Cabrillo High School Stadium. Volunteers at the gate ensured there was a price for admission to keep up funding for the best high school stadium in the County.

I’m already looking forward to seeing Hermes face Conquistador next year. The team has a fantastic new coach as well as several great players who I once coached when they were tweens. Lastly, Philip’s friend Carson (who wasn’t eligible to play this season) will be back in gear as one of Conquistador’s top players. With this year’s game, we knew Hermes would slaughter Conquistador. Next year—with more than two thirds of the top players from Hermes graduating in a few weeks—will be a very different match-up.

As usual, parents clustered together in the stadium seating according to the team they supported. Hermes was on the left and Conquistador was on the right. But there are always exceptions. From behind me I could hear a very loud Conquistador fan cheering on his son’s team. But as the Hermes scores piled on while Conquistador remained scoreless, his volume increased and his tone deteriorated.

As one brave Conquistador player I had once coached took control of the ball and headed toward the Hermes goal, he took two particularly hard but legal hits first from Bruce and then from Bruce’s younger brother Richey but skillfully managed to keep control of the ball. The frustrated fan behind me howled, “C’mon Ref’ … aren’t you gonna call a foul there!”

I spoke up from what I guessed were six or seven rows ahead of him. “Nope. Those were actually legal hits.” But I spoke too soon as a third hit from a two hundred, seventy pound first year Hermes player recruited from the football team’s Defensive line slammed into the ball-holder and earned Hermes a penalty.

“Bullshit!” screamed the angry fan behind me and I felt a pang of guilt for own tongue. So I decided to walk back several rows and make a new friend. The angry fan turned out to be watching the game from outside the stadium with his fingers clutching the chain-link fence about two feet apart a few inches above his head.

“Looks like this game is gonna be a blow-out but this years coach at Conquistador is doing a really good job with the team. They are going to be quite a force next year. Which player are you here watching?”

My strategy worked. The man was grinning and happy to engage. “I think you’re right. This is going to be a really strong team next year. My boy is number thirty-four … freshman … he’s on the bench. It’s his first year playing and he loves this game.” We talked for several minutes enjoying the game. I talked about the players I had once coached who were now top players on the Conquistador team and how happy it made me to see them playing so well against Hermes. About mid-way through our chat, my new friend was particularly surprised to realize I was a Hermes parent, not a Conquistador parent but he recovered quickly.

I had my own surprise not long after as I realized I was befriending not just an angry man but probably a violent man. He casually mentioned that he had “almost gotten into a brawl” with one of the referees in the previous day’s Conquistador game when they had faced Santa Carla. I had initially thought he was standing outside the chain-link fence to save himself from paying the particularly high gate fee and had even teased him about it. But his words made me wonder if he had either been kicked out of the stadium or needed to honor a restraining order regarding his son’s mother.

As he talked about his son, there was both great pride and great sadness. The boy lived primarily with his mother and the divorce was a non-amicable. The promising Conquistador freshman was the man’s only child. The boy was a good athlete, a good student and well-liked. A group of the boy’s friends had convinced him to join the lacrosse team. But the boy did not say much to his father lately. Teenage boys become more private. I had the same experience with Philip when he entered the teenage years. I observed more than my son told me. But from time to time Philip becomes animated at home and shares even his wildest thoughts with his mother and I from the comfort and safety of our family room.

My new friend did not have those family room experiences. The divorce hurt in so many ways and there would be memories he would never get to enjoy as a result. I don’t know how he became an angry man. I suspect it pre-dated the divorce. There’s a counterfeit manliness about a young man’s anger. It has attracted young women for millennia. But if that youthful anger does not get channeled into mature drive, an angry middle-aged man is an ever-threatening ogre in an unhappy home. Divorced within the last two years, my new friend had some sense of ownership regarding his situation but he certainly had not turned himself around in any material way. His anger could have been genetics, generational or consequential. No matter what the source, it was the reason behind his greatest loss.

My new friend clung to what little he had left the way he clung to the chain-link fence. He showed up for his son’s games and watch from a distance. In the end I saw him drive off on a motorcycle that looked like it should be driven by someone ten years younger. He waved at me and I waved back. I knew I’d be seeing him again at next year’s opening game against Conquistador.