Offside!

John Walker is a professor of Spanish at Queen’s University.

Offside! is a sequel to Alecia’s Challenge (1999). Alecia (Leesh)
Sheffield lives in Vancouver with her mother and stepfather Jeremy
Parker, who is also her soccer coach (the Burrards team). Since
Vancouver is one of the few places where soccer can be played
year-round, Leesh also has to deal with adverse elements like wind,
rain, and ice. The fun of playing soccer is disturbed by the arrival of
a new player Alexandra (Lexi) who turns out to be rude and bossy and
offends the coach and the other players. Lexi’s attitude, we find out,
stems from her home life. Her mother is dead, her father is remarried,
and her parents seem not to be interested in attending Lexi’s games.
Thus Lexi always appears to be “offside,” literally and
figuratively, on and off the field. Much of the story deals with Alecia
and Jeremy’s efforts to get her “onside.” Linked with this problem
is Alecia’s preoccupation with her own dead father; though she hardly
remembers him, she writes letters to him in order to sort out and
articulate her own emotional and domestic problems.

The soccer scenes are quite convincing and well done, representing a
useful background against which are played out the real situations of
family life, domestic problems, and the business of growing up. As Leesh
comes to realize, any man can be a father, but it takes someone special
to be a dad—and a soccer coach. Highly recommended.