#feminist

“There was something different about her Soccer Sisters. Makena and Val were Chloe’s friends because they shared a passion and because they had been through so much together.
“Mud, sweat, tears.
“They won, and they lost.
“Together.
“Always.” (21)

Finished reading One on One, the third and final book in the Soccer Sisters series by Andrea Montalbano, a few days ago. First published in this Sourcebooks Jabberwocky edition in 2018, this one stars Chloe Gordon, the rich girl on the Brookville Breakers, and sister to Andrew, Val’s love interest in the second book, Caught Offside. A talented ballerina, but not the best soccer player, this one follows Chloe and her friends as they attend World Cup Soccer Camp and encounter their old nemesis, Skylar. There are several parts that speak movingly to the meaning of team spirit and the importance of sports, but a few spots that give me misgivings about the whole soccer “for girls” enterprise.

One on One begins with pointed reminders that, as an adolescent, Chloe has one foot squarely into adulthood, and another, a grand jeté apart, still in childhood. While packing products for feminine necessity, she’s aggrieved her mom asks if she remembered her blankie (1). Only for the narrator to admit next page, “(And truth be told, she did have a special blanket she always slept with),” (2). Chloe’s mom wishes she would focus on ballet and drop soccer, fearing bruising or permanent injuries, and Chloe just barely gets permission to attend the two week soccer camp (her brother is on her side, while her dad, lately preoccupied by a kitten, is also more supportive). Later, Chloe realizes how her mother had thoughtfully bought her a new pair of cleats, however; she had just taken them on finding them, and never thanked her (94).

While Chloe isn’t the best player, even on their Brookville Breakers youth team, it means a lot to her. Why? Pages 21-22 are a beautiful evocation of why team sports are special, and add something to life. Chloe recalls a grueling game played in the sleet. Ending in a loss, her parents had been appalled the game wasn’t postponed, but Chloe and her Soccer Sisters got something meaningful out of the hard fought loss.

”The final score was Breakers 0, Fusion 1. The Breakers may have lost, but they weren’t defeated, and they left the field more bonded than ever.
”When Chloe walked the halls of school the next day and her eyes met one of her Soccer Sisters’ eyes, there was a nod. An understanding.
”We play for keeps.” (22)

This brings to mind, and perfectly fits with something much higher up in reading level in literature. On Wikipedia, there’s a piece under “Lord-bondsman dialectic” on some of the thought of Hegel on the master-slave relationship. In a hypothetical single combat (the original “One on One”), the victor has not yielded, while his foe, if left living, has—he has chosen not to resist to the death. This has immense significance for the notion of honor and the justness of the political order. In this lowly children’s book for girl soccer lovers, we get the same thing: only neither side has yielded and both survived, bettered by their day on the field. At a time when “sportsball” being castigated as a decadent, monetized waste of time is old news, and I myself rarely pay attention to it, I liked this reminder of why sports have an important place in civilization.

After we’re treated to a lovely description of the moonlit night at camp on page 114, we get a more disconcerting passage. Chloe really takes to Flavia, one of the camp counselors, who comes from Brazil. Following a food fight Makena and Val accidentally start, Flavia, who grew up in a favela, does the expected part of relating her disappointment with the privileged kids, who always have enough to eat, wasting their food. She also tells Chloe how, as a girl, she had to struggle to play soccer in sexist Brazil, bobbing her hair and playing on a boys’ team. On page 115,

”Flavia told Chloe the story of Sissi, one of the greatest Brazilian players ever. Only her brothers were given soccer balls to play with. Even to sleep with! Sissi got dolls instead. Finally, she decided to rip the heads off the dolls and kick them around. So her mother at last convinced her father to give her a ball. To save the dolls!”

A visceral, even horrifying thing to imagine. Checked, and it turns out Sissi (Siselide do Amor Lima) is a real Brazilian woman footballer, and while the story isn’t given on Wikipedia, a brief search confirms it’s true. She ripped the heads off her dolls, and used them as balls in protest of not being allowed to play soccer!
https://archive.ph/lCIyp
https://archive.ph/WjSGv
https://archive.ph/HE5AB
I don’t know about you, but this gives me deep misgivings over the whole women’s sports enterprise. Were it not certain Montalbano is an advocate of girls playing soccer (Soccer Sisters is a real organization, and the back of the book has information and links to several groups promoting girls playing soccer, including GOALS Armenia, which works in her husband’s native land), I would have thought this was a metaphor thrown in to make readers second guess the opinions they had formed in the first half of the book. Is playing rough, demanding sports a rejection of femininity? Does it lead girls away from the path to motherhood that is the vocation of most of them? Decapitating toys that look like babies sounds like a dry run for the liberal-feminist ethos, which sees abortion as an essential in freeing women from the care of offspring and allowing them to live more like men do, but has been a disaster for our world across all cultures. If Montalbano wanted to present an unambiguous case for women’s sports, she managed to do a poor job eloquently.

Thankfully, One on One isn’t all so abrasive. Last included pages have Chloe lying with Makena and Val in a cute, daisy chainish triangle on the grass as Chloe contemplates what binds them together (119).

”She thought about fierce Val and zany Makena and even Skylar, cruel as she was. They were all unique. From different cultures and places yet still somehow similar on the inside.
“Suddenly, she knew what they all shared.
”Determination.
”They wouldn’t give up, and neither would she.” (120)

Those are the standout moments; I didn’t find the plot quite as engaging as in the first two books. Summer camp provides many opportunities for Skylar, who has learned nothing from the first book, Out of Bounds (why she is still allowed to play in any soccer organizations at all, after pulling a fire alarm at a hotel during a tournament, is never explained), to pick on Chloe for being a ballerina. Jessie, a fellow Breaker who clashed with Val in the second book, gets assigned a dorm with Skylar, and immediately becomes buddies with the bully. A great moment does come when, during skits, Chloe finally owns her talent by showing off some of her ballet moves. For some strange reason Val, whom I just loved in Caught Offside, has taken to saying “Dude!” all the time, and quickly grows annoying. As far as the soccer training itself goes, aside from when the girls get disciplined for their food fight, I don’t feel like there was enough focus on how their training was different from practice back home. And as this closes the trilogy, I regret to say that while bullet points on the Soccer Sisters code, there were never any comic plots about failing to bring snacks on assigned days, or beating the boys at recess soccer! #AndreaMontalbano #OneOnOne #SoccerSisters #adolescence #wealth #womenssports #ballet #femininity #feminism #feminist #Brazil #Hegel #teamspirit #team #sportsmanship #soccer #football #sportsball #sports #childrensliterature #childrensbooks #literature #books