This was my first year as a soccer mom and I’m here to tell you, it’s harder than it looks. I never played team sports, I still don’t really understand soccer, and I spent an entire season screaming ‘GET IT IN THE BASKET!’

Being a soccer mom is weirdly emotional in ways I hadn’t anticipated. I’ve experienced exultation and shame and misery and anger. There are long periods of waiting around. And lots of stinky socks. And sometimes it’s so beautiful to watch the game that it’s made me cry. Secretly. In my Walmart foldout chair.

This show features two area experts—my son’s coach and my sister, a veteran soccer mom. It’s a show about a beautiful sport and it’s also about parenting and shame and humility. And cow bells.

More about the Experts and the Music

Craig Stone is a native of Newcastle, England. He came to the USA as a college student, playing four years of college soccer at the Division 1 University of Evansville, Indiana.  Following school, Stone coached in the Washington D.C area for 10-years –as well as moonlighting as an online editor, producer and manager with Education Week, a national publication focusing on K-12 education–before moving to Vermont in 2009 and joining the state’s Olympic Development Program staff; he also coached with Capital Soccer Club, a community-based travel club based in Montpelier, Vermont.

Stone is a staff coach with the U.S. ODP Region 1 Boys U13 team–the Vermont Olympic Development program, and also Head Coach & co-founder of the Vermont ODP U-12 Academy. He also still attempts to play the game as often as possible, but with a continual decline in quality. He is married to Alison Milbury Stone, and has one son, Ned.

Melissa Burroughs is a soccer mom and teacher at St. Johnsbury Academy in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. She no longer employs the cowbells at games, though she doesn’t rule it out.