James at 13

Happy 13th birthday to my son James, who devotes every free moment to playing soccer, practicing his soccer moves, reading about soccer, watching soccer analysis and game clips on YouTube, and playing soccer videogames.
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In fall, 2015, when James' team lost the league final by one point, due to James' own errant header -- a random thing, happens all the time -- he was in tears. He was convinced that his teammates blamed him for the loss when in fact none of them did; they were all grateful it wasn't them that it happened to. I hugged him, and he said, "Just once in my life I wanted to win something."

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