Really Meet the Publisher

A probably far too candid glimpse into some life events that helped make me me

We are molded by our experiences...

I began playing soccer at the age of six. This was not by choice. My dad still recalls how he had to literally drag me, kicking and screaming, to my first Rochester Youth Soccer Association recreational soccer practice. Not soon after that however, you couldn’t stop me from playing.

I take pride in the fact that I was responsible for many new rules in the Abboud household. After a few broken lamps, “No soccer balls in the house!” was heard just as much as “No candy except on Saturdays!”. Pretty soon “No soccer balls in the house!” blossomed into “No soccer balls aimed at the house!” which was a true shame because we had a beautiful, black, double garage door devoid of any windows that just happened to be the exact size of a goal. Plus, unless I was way off target, I wouldn’t have to chase the ball down because it would hit off our siding or our service door beside the garage, or the two-story cedar-shingled roof above it, and come back to me. Brilliant! Moreover, I would have to retrieve on-target shots from a net!

There were some great goals scored in that driveway, even after the rule came into effect. It wasn’t until I got older and 1) either became too lazy to wash the soccer ball marks off the garage door, or 2) developed more leg strength and started denting the wood garage door panels (I can’t remember which) that got me into serious trouble.

Anyway, soccer was the dominating presence in my youth. I tried to play other team sports, but things just didn’t seem to work out. I was too small for football, and too short for basketball, or so people told me. I had somehow managed to skip Kindergarten altogether as well which made me a full year younger than most of my classmates. Nicknames of Pee-Wee, Scooter, and Shrimp, still echo in my head. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I was unathletic by any means… far from it in fact. I had good hand eye coordination and was a solid tee-ball player. I’m pretty sure that I would have made millions in pro baseball if I didn’t dodge some of the line-drives to short that all seemed to be purposefully aimed at my head, and if I didn't eventually quit after getting beamed in my first little league game.

I had more success in the individual sports, and always had fun playing tennis, golf, or skiing, but soccer was my sport. I was always fast and quick. In fact, I was always the fastest kid in my class. That was until 3rd grade when Blair Robertson stole that honor. I wonder what she’s up to these days? Probably won a few gold medals in international track and field competitions. My speed, coupled with a natural sense of the game and good technique, helped me excel in youth soccer. I always enjoyed playing the game and that was my main reason for staying involved. Looking back at it now, my success at the sport was another motivation for continuing to play. Good players in youth sports are always popular among their peers, and believe me, I wanted to be popular.

My parents were not born here in the States. My dad is originally from Palestine and my mom from the Pillipines. So I didn't look like a tyipcal kid in white-dominatned, conservative Rochester, MN. Now, you might think that that’s not a big deal, but for me, a kid who desparately wanted to fit in and be popular, it meant the world. Today, I appreciate my differences and non-standard-American-white-boy look, but growing up it was a burden of sorts. At least that’s what my psychologist says.

My first few years playing competitive soccer, then called traveling soccer, gave me my best friends of my youth. We had a solid group of young players and, laregely in part to my dad’s (our coach) soccer knowledge (he was a good player in his own rights growing up), discipline, and all around love for the game, brought home Rochester’s first State Soccer Championship in 1982.

By the way, back in the day (I can’t believe I’m old enough to use that saying!), I’m talking the early 1980s, soccer was not as popular a youth sport as it is today. It’s ironic… the professional soccer league of that day, the North American Soccer League (NASL) was extremely popular, filling stadiums across the country with 50,000+ spectators. This obviously had an impact in bringing young athletes into the game, but as the popularity among the youth players grew, the NASL and MISL (Major indoor Soccer League) attendance figures dropped.

Where was I going with this? Oh, yeah! Back in the day, we didn’t have all the different playing levels and names for league play that exist today; U9, U10, U10.37, Red, White, Blue, Maroon, Gold, Light Beige, Premier, Classic 1, Select, Traveling, Only-Travel-A-Certain-Distance, Recreational, Recreational Plus, Competitive, etc. One needs a Palm Pilot and SQL database software just to keep all these straight! Someone please come up with one system and mandate that each state follow the same format. But I digress…

Back in the day, it was simple. Age groups were divided into U12, U14, U16, and U19. Each of these age groups was further subdivided into Major and Minor divisions. That’s it. Four age groups and you were either good (Major) or you weren’t (Minor). So it went then that my team would have a mediocre (at best) year when we were on the young end of the age group, and then we’d be super strong when we were the old kids on the block.

Where was I going with this? Popularity. Because we had a very successful year and won the State Tournament as U12s, we started to have other players in the city really want to join our team. Some of my dad’s most heartbreaking moments were when he had to call someone who had played with us for years and, after tryouts, inform them that they did not end up making the team. I never understood this pain until I went through this with my WSC Inferno team in 2002. Anyway, when it came time to hold tryouts for our Rochester Arrows U14 team, the year in which we were on the older end of the food chain, a boy name Joel Cox wanted to come and play with us. What has Joel got to do with anything? Let me back track a little bit…

At the age of twelve I began attending Willow Creek Junior High School. Again, I was a fast and athletic kid, the kid who was always picked first for lunchtime kickball and football games in elementary school. Well, that was until 3rd grade when much to my disgust everyone discovered that not only could Blair Robertson run like the wind, but also could catch anything thrown even remotely close to her and could drop any of her classmates, male or female, with perfectly executed crunching mid-body tackles that left people gasping for air and seeing stars. I wouldn’t be surprised if she played football somewhere in college (probably Division I) or even in the CFL.

Anyway, when I got to Junior High School (7th grade), everything changed. I was no longer a big fish in a little pond, but a little fish in a big pond. That I was fast and athletic didn’t seem to matter anymore. Now, the popular guys in school were the ones who had already started shaving and had hair under their arms… or so it seemed to little old hit-puberty-very-late-and-be-the-shortest-kid-in-school-who-can’t-see-over-the-5-foot-tall-orange-lockers-and-whose-mom-only-dressed-him-in-corduroy-not-to-mention-that-each-pair-of-his-pants-had-a-matching-sweater-and-he-would-wear-this-type-of-outfit-every-day-because-he-had-no-idea-that-bluejeans-were-in-style-and-on-top-of-it-all-not-have-the-same-skin-or-hair-color-as-everyone-else me. Don't forget that I skipped Kindergarten so I was a year younger than the majority of my grade.

So while all the popular kids spend the half-an-hour or so, between the time that the busses dropped everyone off at school to the time that homeroom began, sitting around the big, circular orange tables in the school’s cafeteria, I spent that time up with the other non-popular nerds up in the school’s library answering the sometimes tricky, yet always discoverable, Question of the Day. The librarian, whose name I can’t recall (too many headers since then I guess) bless her devilish-little-Dewey-Decimal soul, would come up with a different question each morning and post it on the Shrine of Knowledge. Interested students, who always seemed to be me and my Dungeons-&-Dragons-playing-Rubik’s-Cube-solving-in-15.5-seconds (we used to take the cubes apart and Vaseline the pieces so that we could turn everything faster) friends would jump of the busses (we were the weirdoes who sat three to a seat in the front of the bus even though there were plenty of open seats in the back), throw our books and violins and oboes into our lockers (which would be set to open with a flick of the risk because we would dial up our 3-number combination at the end of the previous day prior to leaving school for easy access – pure genius!), and race up to the library, all the way avoiding the body checks from the 9th graders. We would then bow to The Shrine, read The Question inscribed on it’s sacred parchment beneath the glass, and then have to use different library resources to come up with The Answer. One day we might have to use Bartlett ’s Famous Quotations, while the next day might call for Roget’s Thesaurus. Some days, The Question would send us on a wild goose chase with pitfalls and dead ends through the World Atlas, to the Encyclopedia Britannica, and finish up in the Who’s Who of Something… brilliant!

But the best part of it all was the fact that whichever pocket-protector-headgear-wearing-Watership-Down-reading-geek was the first one to submit the correct answer got their name read over the homeroom loudspeaker right after the morning announcements so that the entire school could be witness to their triumph! Brilliant! “And students, today’s Question of the Day, who was the Prime Minister of Angola during the Mesopotamian era and what was his favorite color?” was… dramatic pause… Mark Abod!”

Somehow that fricking principal would always pronounce my name "A-bod", or "A-bound", and never the correct "A-bood", but most of the time I didn’t let that taint my moment in the sun. Those were the days! Just so long as it was me and not Eric Boyer, that no-good-always-having-the-best-Dungeon-&-Dragon-half-elf-multi-class-fighter-magic-users-who-always-seemed-to-throw-up-his-magic-Ring-of-Spell-Turning-just-as-I-thought-I-had-him-with-my-Magic-Missle friend of mine. Drat that Magic Ring of Spell Turning! How was I supposed to inflict damage on that guy if that ring would reflect all my spells right back on top of me?!?!? Plus, he had an Armor Class of like –17.

Where was I going with all this? Oh yeah… popularity. So it came to be that on Monday, September 26, 1983 , I decided that I would become popular. That morning, instead of making the trek up to the library to attempt to reclaim the status of "The Answerer” (the name my friends and I would reverently call whoever was the first to answer correctly the Question) from Eric Boyer, I ducked and dodged, bobbed and wove, turned and hid, and crawled and sprinted my way through the 9th grade locker room towards the large, round, orange tables in cafeteria where all the jocks and mint girls hung out. Sweat ran down my bare armpits as I approached the tables. I will always remember how orange they looked. I made my way over to the least imposing table, The One, where I saw Joe O’Neil’s head peaking over one of the edges. I thought that I might find some sympathy here because Joe, whether by genetic defect or bad luck, happened to be exactly my size, maybe smaller. Little did I know that Joe’s best friend from elementary school was Matt Nesset, a tall, good looking, basketball (and football I think) playing jock whose parents lived up on Pill Hill (thus named because of all the doctors from the Mayo Clinic who lived up there). Plus, he was good friends with Gaye Sterriof, the best looking girl in school. She was so mint! My best friend, or so I thought, from elementary school was Colin "The Peacock" Piepgrass. As it turns out, he always harbored ill will towards me ever since I invited every one else in our 6th grade class to my birthday party except for him because I didn’t want any competition for Kelly Evans, the mintest girl at Bamber Valley Elementary School. Anyway, Joe had nothing to fear in Junior High as he rode on Matt’s Coat Tails of Popularity.

Back to the Day. There were three or four other people sitting around The One; Andy Peterson, Paul Kaump, Craig Linder, and one or two other faces I can’t place. And there were no girls. I stepped up to the table, pulled back one of the brown plastic chairs, you know, the ones that the back and seat were all made out of the same piece of brown plastic and whose legs were two trapezoids with rounded corners. Fun to teeter on until you would lean forward a fraction too far and the rounded corner would slip on the tile floor and you would hit your chin on the table or desk in front of you. Anyway, I pulled back The Chair and sat down. All conversation ceased as inquiring looks were quickly replaced by dawning recognition. A split second later, by some God-given telepathic gift that all popular kids possess and with more coordination than an Olympic Gold Medal Syncronized Swim team, everyone scattered. I can still hear the sound of the chairs skidding back across the tile floor, colliding with other chairs and tables around The One, propelled with such force by the back of flexed knees abruptly straightened as seated people rose to stand, and still see the crazed look in some of their eyes as if some alien invader with a toxic stench that would paralyze any earthling who came within 5 feet of it had just beamed down from its starship into their midst.

What the…? What just happened here? I’m not an alien beamed among you to take over your junior high school lunchroom! Look at me! I’m human! Look at my hands! Look at my eyes! Look at my headgear! I speak English for God’s sake! Talk about a life moment that I will never forget. Where am I going with all this?!?!? Oh yeah… popularity.

Well, I came back on the 27th, and again on the 28th. I kept returning to The One until eventually, curiosity overpowered some of the popular human's fear and disgust, and some people actually came near me. One of these people was Joel Cox. Why did he overcome his aversion and seek communication with me? Because he wanted to get on my good side so that I would tell my dad to place him on our soccer team the following season. At least, this is what I thought. And I actually remember having feelings of anger for this manipulating little popular kid! So I did what any one else would have done in my position. I went back home and really started campaigning for Joel to make our team.

Now it wasn’t my begging that placed Joel on our team that next year. Joel actually had decent skills for a GK and would have made the team anyway. He turned out to be my best friend through high school and we co-captained our high school varsity team our senior year.

How did my search to become popular end up you might ask? Well, with Joel talking to me, other humans felt more comfortable with me being around, and actually also began interacting with the “alien intruder”. It didn’t hurt that my brain was more evolved than many of them and I began helping them with their homework assignments in the mornings. By high school, I had totally assimilated into their society, and was a mainstay in that crowd by my senior year. What ever happened to my 7th grade friends from junior high? The Seekers of Knowledge from the library? Well, I didn’t talk with most of them again, something I truly regret to this day.

So it went. My 10th grade year, our first high school year, was the very first year that Mayo High School had a soccer program. My dad volunteered to coach the team for their first year, and continues to coach in that program today. I had a successful high school career and was named to the Minnesota All-State Team my junior and senior years. I had hopes of playing Division I soccer at Duke after graduation, but my parents, much to my disagreement, basically mandated that I go to school somewhere close in Minnesota. I talked to coaches from St Thomas University and Macalester College, and eventually chose Macalester... well, my dad chose Macalester. One of the best decisions that I never made.

Looking back at it now, college is where I did most of my soccer development. It would have been a real struggle with my size to red-shirt, let alone play, as a walk-on at Duke. At Macalester under Coach John Leaney , I was able to come in and start my very first freshman, or first-year-student as liberal, pro-choice-anti-shaving, Macalester women liked to call it, year. John and my dad were the only two coaches who ever showed constant confidence in my ability to my face, and this was reflected in my play. This is not an excuse for anything, just a simple statement of perceived fact.

I used my development in college as a stepping stone into the professional ranks in 1992 with the Tampa Bay Rowdies of the American Professional Soccer League. It was during my rookie summer in Tampa where I first stumbled on the joy of coaching young female soccer players.