← Sleep Tight Stories - Bedtime Stories for Kids
Sleep Tight Stories - Bedtime Stories for Kids
The Corgi Who Played Goalkeeper P.2 ⚽
00:24:31
The best bedtime story for kids during the world cup
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Hello friends. Before we begin, there's a quick ad and then we'll get right to the story. It's the carefree days of summer, but we know it doesn't always feel that way for parents. You've scheduled the camps, booked the vacation, but what about all those other hours in the day? Meet Next Playground, the active game system where your body controls the play. Kid safe gaming means no ads in app purchases or mature content, and no online chats or friends you don't really know. Playground comes with five experiences ready to play, add play, pass and unlock over 50 games, many with characters your kids already know and love. They even have an the Last Airbender game centered around the Earth Rumble Tournament. Practice rock bending while dinner bubbles in the crock pot to fill those long summer days with active play. Check out nextplayground.com that's nexplayground.com to learn more. Hello friends and welcome to sleept Stories. Each week we share a few shoutouts and birthday wishes for listeners who help support the show. It's a small way we say thank you and it always makes us smile. Happy 10th birthday Penelope, our kind, clever and wonderfully creative girl. You make the world brighter every day. We are so proud of you. Sweet dreams. Love Mama and Dada. Happy first birthday to our Raffi from Mom, dad, Sammy, Leo and Rory. We love you so much. Happy 8th birthday to Leon from Sydney, Australia. You are so clever, creative and funny and you make the best comic books. We can't wait to see what new adventures this year brings. Love mom and dad. Happy belated birthday to Raya in Tennessee who turned nine on June 2nd. Mama, Daddy and Kaylee. Love you very much. Our Stardew Valley and real life summer adventures are going to be epic. Happy 6th birthday to Margot Cairns on June 16th. Happy 6th birthday Griffin with so much love from Mommy, Daddy, Luke, Sadie and Peter the Cat. Happy birthday Ishaan. Have a wonderful day and year ahead. Keep building your creativity and music. Mom, dad, Didi, we all love you. Happy birthday once again. Happy 6th birthday and kindergarten graduation to Sweet Jade. We're so proud of who you are and we love watching you grow. You bring us so much joy and laughter. Keep being brave, kind and hardworking. Love mom, dad, little bear and reindeer. Happy birthday to our future space scientist Malaya Kairos Makatangi from the Philippines. We are so excited for what your seventh year has in store for you. Tate Nane and big sister Mayumi will always love you and keep cheering for you. Keep reaching for the stars. Laia, happy 8th birthday. Connor James Oak, your mama is so very proud of you and amazed by all the ways you have grown this year. Eight is great and Katie from East Norrington, Pennsylvania a very happy ninth birthday. You have shown so much courage, cleverness and determination this year. All our love Mommy Didi and Connell, Happy Birthday to you all. You know, every time we sit down to record, we think about you tucked in, ready for a story, maybe holding a favorite stuffed toy or snuggled next to someone you love. Knowing we get to be part of your bedtime makes everything we do feel worthwhile. If sleept Stories has become part of your family's routine, thank you. And if you'd like to support what we do while enjoying ad free episodes and bonus stories, Sleepty Premium is just two taps away. The link is in the show Notes. Now onto our story. Cooper and his friends went to the soccer tryouts and Cooper was very surprised at the end when the coach asked him to come back and try. Goalkeeper Cooper goes back on Monday and is worried about how he is going to be able to stop the ball from getting into the net when he can only jump 4 inches. The coach talks to him and gives him some words of wisdom. The Corgi who played Goalkeeper Part two. Practice was Monday after school, on the same field with the same two big cleats. Cooper arrived early, which he felt pretty good about. Coach Davis was already there, setting up cones and pointed Cooper toward the net without setting saying much. Cooper walked over and stood in it. He stood there for a while, not really knowing what to do. The net was big, not like surprisingly big. He knew what a soccer net looked like, but standing inside one was different than looking at one from the field. It made him feel small, which maybe he sometimes realized he was. How was he supposed to guard what felt like the size of a gym with his body all by himself? He turned around and looked at the field. Everyone else was doing drills, passing back and forth, running through cones, kicking balls at things. It looked like fun. It looked like what he had signed up for when he signed up for soccer, which was running around outside with his friends, not standing alone in a large rectangle. Thinking about the size of a large rectangle. Buster jogged over during a water break. How is it? Buster asked. It's fine, said Cooper. Buster looked at the net, then at Cooper, then at the net again. You want me to kick some at you? Sure, said Cooper. Buster kicked one. It went high and wide and missed the net entirely, which meant it also missed Cooper entirely, which was a kind of problem. Sorry, said Buster it's fine, said Cooper. Buster jogged back. The actual drills were harder. Coach Davis had the older kids taking shots and Cooper in goal, and the first three went over his head so cleanly he wasn't even sure he should have moved. He tried jumping for the fourth one. Four inches of air. The ball went in. He tried jumping for the fifth one, too. Still four inches, still in. Stop jumping, said Coach Davis from somewhere behind him. I'm trying to save it, said Cooper. I know, said the coach. Stop jumping. Cooper stopped jumping. The next shot was low and hard to the left, and he dropped and slid and got it clean. And it felt completely different from everything else that had happened that afternoon, like something clicking into place that he didn't know needed to be clicked into place. Then a high one in. Then another high one in. He walked home slowly. Buster and Buck were talking about something that had happened in math class, but Cooper wasn't really listening. That night, his mom asked him how practice went. Ok, I guess, he said. She waited. The high ones go in, he said. I can't stop them. They just go in and there's nothing I can do about it. And I think maybe I should try a different position or possibly a different sport. His mom put down what she was doing. What were you good at today? Cooper thought about it. The low ones. I got all the low ones. She nodded. Ok, that's it, said Cooper. That's all you're going to say? What do you want me to say? Cooper thought about this for a moment. He didn't actually know. I'll see you at dinner, his mom said, and went back to what she was doing. He went to practice Tuesday, and it went about the same as Monday. High ones in, low ones out. 4 inches of air. He was starting to think 4 inches was just his number. Then on Wednesday, Coach Davis pulled him aside before the rest of the team arrived. Where do you think most goals are scored? The coach said. Cooper looked at the net. He thought about the shots from Monday, the ones that went in over his head, which was most of them. Hi, he said. Coach Davis shook his head. Low, hard and low corners. Mostly high shots look exciting, but they're rushed. They go wide. The keeper has time. He stood up. Most goals happen right here. He pointed to the two bottom corners. In your corners. Cooper looked at the two bottom corners. They were exactly his height. Oh, said Cooper. The coach nodded. Yeah. They started with the slide drill. Coach Davis rolled balls to the left corner, then the right, then the left again. Faster. And Cooper pushed off and covered the ground. And got to them. It wasn't graceful exactly. There was a lot of scrambling and and once he went too far and ended up mostly outside the post, which the coach did not comment on. But he was getting there. He was getting to balls that should have been out of reach, and he was getting to them in time. After a while the coach stopped rolling and just watched him. You know what you're doing? The coach said. You're reading it before I even kick. You're already moving. Cooper hadn't noticed that. He thought about it. The coach's shoulder dropped slightly before a ball went left. His plant foot pointed where the ball was going. Cooper had been watching all of it without knowing he was watching it. Is that good? Cooper said. That's the whole job, said the coach. They tried the high shots again at the end because Cooper asked. He wanted to know if anything had changed. It had not changed. The ball went over him and over him and over him, and the 4 inches of air were still 4 inches. At one point. Buster, who had arrived early and was watching from the sideline, suggested a step stool, which he meant helpfully and which Coach Davis ignored so thoroughly it was almost impressive. What about the high ones? Cooper said. What do I do about those? Coach Davis picked up the bag. You let your defenders deal with them. That's what they're there for. He looked at Cooper. You can't do everything. Nobody can. You do what you're good at and you trust your team for the rest. Cooper thought about this on the walk home. He'd been so busy thinking about what he couldn't stop that he hadn't thought much about what he could the low ones. All the low ones. The end of semester game was on a Saturday morning, which meant Cooper was up before his alarm, which had never happened before in the history of Saturdays, at least not unless ice cream was involved. His mom noticed, but didn't say anything about it. She made him breakfast, scrambled eggs, which he didn't even complain about, and he was out the door with his cleats over his shoulder before she could comment on this either. The other team was called the Riverside Rovers, and they were good. Cooper could tell just from the warm ups. They passed crisply, moved well, and had a striker, a very large greyhound named something Cooper didn't catch, who was taking shots at their keeper from distances that seemed unreasonable and getting them on target every time. Cooper watched him from the other end of the field and thought about the stepstool. Then he thought about the low ones and went to stand in his Net. The game started fast. The greyhound got the ball early, drove toward goal and hit it high and hard to the top corner. Cooper watched it go in. He hadn't moved. He thought about what Coach Davis said. Let your defenders deal with the high ones. But there hadn't been any defenders between the greyhound and the net, and the ball was in, and Cooper was standing there having done nothing. His internal monologue was not very helpful at this point. It said, maybe you should have jumped. He told it jumping wouldn't have helped. It said, you don't know that. He said, yes, I do. We've been over this. It said, what if this time was different? He said, it wasn't. The internal monologue went quiet, but in a skeptical way. One nil. Ten minutes later. Low shot, left corner, Cooper read. The greyhound's shoulder was already moving before the ball left his foot and got down and stopped it clean. The ball bounced away off his paws and Buck, who was defending, cleared it up field. His team went quiet for a second. Then Buster made a noise from the sideline that was somewhere between a cheer and a surprised yelp. A few others joined in. Cooper got back to his feet and tried to look like this was the kind of thing he did all the time. The greyhound tried high twice more after that. Both went in. Cooper didn't move for either of them and was starting to make peace with this. High ones, go in. That was just how it was. He was working on acceptance. But then something shifted. The greyhound was getting impatient. Cooper could see it, the way he was rushing, taking shots earlier than he should. And when a player rushed, they went low. Coach Davis had said that, too. Low shot, right corner, blocked. The greyhound looked at him. Cooper looked back. Low shot, left corner, blocked. The greyhound said something to one of his teammates that Cooper couldn't hear. His teammate shrugged. Then Cooper's team scored again. Somehow there was a scramble in front of the other net and the ball went in off someone's knee. Nobody was entirely sure whose. And suddenly it was three, two. And there were two minutes left and Cooper had stopped thinking about anything except the greyhound. At the other end of the field, the whistle blew. Penalty. Cooper didn't know what the greyhound had done. He walked to his line and faced him and thought about shoulders and plant feet and corners. The greyhound placed the ball, stepped back, looked at the net. Cooper waited. The greyhound ran up and hit it low and hard to the right corner. And Cooper was already there, both paws out, and the ball hit him square and bounced clear. And the whistle went and the Game was over. They lost. 3, 2. Cooper stood in his net for a moment after the final whistle, just standing there. Buster was making that noise again from the sideline. Some of his teammates were coming over, the ones who'd been skeptical at the beginning, and they were saying things like good game and nice save, and one of the older dogs, a border collie who had barely spoken to Cooper all season, just nodded at him once, which felt like approximately the same as a standing ovation. Coach Davis walked over last. Three, two, cooper said. Three two, the coach agreed. They walked home the long way, which was Buster's idea and which nobody argued with because the long way went past the bakery and the bakery sometimes had samples. The bakery had samples, yummy, delicious and gooey ones. It was a good day, despite everything. We lost, buck said, not in a mean way, just noting it, the way Buck noted things. I know, said Cooper. You let in three goals, buck said. I know. That last save was really good, though, buster said, still chewing. Yeah, said Cooper. It was. They walked a bit further. Someone on the street had the World cup on one of the early games, and they could hear the announcer through an open window as they passed, very excited about something. Cooper stopped for a second and listened. Do you think any of those goalkeepers are short? He said. Buster and Buck looked at each other. Like professional ones. Cooper said in the actual World Cup? I don't know, said Buck. Maybe. Probably some, said Buster, which was the kind of answer Buster gave when he didn't know either but wanted to be helpful. Cooper started walking again. He was going to look it up when he got home. He had a feeling the answer was going to be more complicated than yes or. Or no, which was fine. Most answers were. His mom was in the kitchen when he got back. She looked up when he came in. How did it go? She asked. We lost, said Cooper. Three, two. She nodded. You okay? Cooper thought about the Greyhound's shoulder dropping slightly before the ball went left, the way his plant foot pointed to the corner, the ball hitting his paws and bouncing clear. Yeah, he said. I'm okay. His mom smiled, not the smile from before, the one where she was thinking something she'd decided not to say, a different one. Scrambled eggs for dinner, she said. Mom, I'm kidding. He went upstairs and dropped his cleats by the door and lay on his bed for a while, looking at the ceiling. The World cup was still a bit away. He had absolutely no idea which teams were in it or who was going to win or really anything about it beyond what Marcus had said at lunch on that one Monday, which wasn't much, but he was going to watch it this time, actually watch it. And when the goalkeeper made a save, a low one, hard to the corner, the kind that looked almost easy if you didn't know what you were looking for, Cooper was going to know exactly what he did. He picked up his tablet. There was a lot of information. He did not fall asleep in four minutes this time. And that is the end of the story. Good night. Sleep tight. Sa.