(The author is a soccer mom, PhD. and educational professional from the Southeast).

Being part of the coffee nation is just one requirement to earn your soccer-mom card.

 

Why wouldn’t it be when you depart your casa at 5:00 a.m. to tote an SUV full of teenagers to the illustrious 8:00 a.m. Saturday morning game; or when you have to drive two hours to the nearest airport to put your player on a 6:00 a.m. flight to California; then there are those summer mornings when you have to travel south and west some 450 miles to drop a handful of mountain-dwelling soccer kids off at Region camp, just to turn around and drive right back home. Who needs java more than us? Nobody! 

 

Anyone who takes a look on the sidelines of the pitch knows that java and soccer- spectating have a natural allure. The travel-soccer lifestyle is outrageously frenzied. What other sport requires an 8:00 a.m. game start, a second Saturday game at 5:00 p.m., with the possibility of playing four games in weekend? A majority of soccer families have more than one kid playing so double that schedule and see who can keep up with the Jones’s! Better yet, triple that schedule with a third child and watch two parents do miracles, body cloning, and macro-cheering across an entire soccer complex. We do this because it is a chosen life-style and we love it; as a matter of fact, we breathe it, it’s how we roll. 

 

But java on our journey is just a little pleasure that wakes us up, keeps us going, provides warmth, smiles and keeps us sane in an insane race to do dat soccer-parent thang!

 

Long hours and hundreds of miles on the south east blacktop is grueling and sometimes downright torturous. A four-year old SUV with 150,000 miles is my credential for professional-level experience with both soccer momming and coffee consuming. I know my soccer, but I know my coffee equally as well. Some coffee protocol is essential no matter where it comes from; then there are the fav stops along the highways and by-ways that do it right. With iPhone in hand, I am beamed into the best and quickest options. 

Any coffee stop has to have a plethora of options! For me, black coffee, straight up with no intervention, is empathetically boring. Give me some flavor, and give me the flavors I crave. Hazelnut, caramel, mocha, and even good ole French vanilla gives this soccer mom her fix. One of the most exciting things about the Fall is the pumpkin spice flavor option! Early in the season, at the Atlanta Cup, I went out on a limb and requested a pumpkin spice latte at a nationally-known high-end coffee shop; it wasn’t being marketed yet, but voilà, produced for me was a brilliant cup of hot liquid party-on-my-tongue magic! Even most of the convenience stores bring out some type of pumpkin cappuccino during October, which makes it that much more fun finding those stops that speak my java-language!

 

Spoil me, please! I really don’t like having to make my own concoction of flavor, sweetener and Colombian roast; I want a professional coffee artist to do it for me! When you are a weekend-hotel-dweller, the free breakfast buffet is definitely a must, along with a decent convenience store just around the corner. But please, if I have to make it myself, give me the essentials to produce a Picasso level beverage. Flavor selections, sweetener options, half-and-half and most definitely non-fat creamer choices; stir sticks, disposable cups with lids that easily, yes easily, snap into place. It’s an ongoing challenge to see who can show up to a soccer match without the evidence of java inebriation on the front of our shirt! 

 

I don’t drink bad coffee. Why would I treat my body that way? I have high expectations about my consumptions and you should too! If it doesn’t taste good don’t drink it. That is the beauty in having our favorite, tested and approved, stops. But that isn’t always possible. Visiting a different city every weekend compels me to seek out the reliable and explore the unknown. Hence, the smart phone! GPS, coffee apps, yellow pages app, oh yes, we can find the much needed cup-of-joe! The trustworthy options around the south east include Starbucks, McDonalds, and convenience stores like Pilot, Weigels, and Sheetz. The unknown are those cute little locally-owned coffee shops that you happen to spy out as you are truckin’ to the pitch or that show up on your iPhone search for the best, or closest java stop options. 

 

At least for the south east, Starbucks got swag! No matter where I go, she’s there; 8:00 a.m. game? 8:00 p.m. game? I can find her, she calls my name! Yes, before you say it, I know, over-priced; but isn’t everything travel-soccer a bit over priced? Heck, we pay $25.00 for a cheesy all-cotton tournament t-shirt! We spend $200 fueling up the SUV for the weekend, and an extra fifty bucks a night for a hotel with an indoor pool. Why go cheap and save two or three dollars on a bad cup of coffee when we can have consistent, near perfection, for a few cents more? 

 

Another reliable and convenient choice is McDonalds. They jumped on the artisan-coffee bandwagon a few years ago and have professional looking java stations with made-to-order designer options. The tiff I have is the inconsistency in taste and quality. I contribute that to the mundane frenzy of their restaurant environment. They do not specialize in coffee. The fella making my joe might be the same fella that just loaded the potatoes in the deep fryer or who has the head set on taking orders from the drive-through. Focus on me and my coffee! The cappuccinos and lattes take some love, thought, correct temperature and timing to be exquisite. I deserve that! 

 

So back to the Bucks, so consistent, so delish and so many options. They market vivaciously to the coffee connoisseur. The Starbucks app for iPhones allows highway dwellers to locate the nearest store, use reward points, load cash onto and pay with your phone as well as view the menu and build your own beverage virtually. I know that when I order my venti non-fat hazelnut latte with whip, it will be the same taste and quality whether I am in Bristol, Virginia, or Greenville, South Carolina, up north or out west. Interestingly, Starbucks is within reasonable driving, or diversion, distances to many soccer complexes; I wonder if that was intentional? Kudos to their coffee, service and to their favorable locations! 

 

The epitome of beverage consumption for the soccer life style would be a reputable mobile station available at the soccer complexes so many of us frequent. Coffee options of all flavors and sizes. Sports drinks and designer-water option for our players too! Maybe even a lil post-game tottie option for those epic failures! JK! A smartphone application that allowed us to order and pay from the sideline and have it delivered right to us in the middle of the first half or to our player during half-time. That is an untapped market that has the potential to be a huge entrepreneurial success. 

So, cheers to the weekend, I’ll drink to that! No matter where the pitch takes you, java’s your rock star!