Are 80 games for the kids or the parents?

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Last week eight state soccer championships went up for grabs, and in a performance that puts the whole “Two Maines” theory into a very convenient nutshell, the West enjoyed a slight edge.

That’s our understated Other Maine-ese way of saying that those supposedly pampered players from down south did OK.

The West won eight. And the East? Well, there’s always hockey. Or basketball. Or lacrosse. Wait. … forget lacrosse.

You can almost hear the frustration emanating from across the region, from Madawaska and Van Buren to Hampden and Ellsworth. Everywhere an Eastern Maine champ resides, someone has a way to even the score.

One Western Maine coach told a Portland newspaper that on his region’s top teams, many players compete in 50 to 80 games a year.

They’ve been doing it for years. Pretty simple, huh?

It’s high school soccer’s recipe for success. Don’t look, but it’s getting pretty well entrenched around here, too.

It’s just that everything – positive and negative – seems to start in southern Maine and work its way north. Slowly.

This time it’s select soccer. Or travel soccer. Summer soccer. Winter soccer. Spring soccer. Soccersoccersoccer.

The recipe works just as well in hockey, and softball, and hoop.

Our kids can be better. Let’s ship ’em all over the state every weekend. Tournaments? You betcha. And games. Tons of ’em. Let’s start the kids early. Six years old? Seven? Good enough. Let’s let ’em play more games at age 8 than grown men in the NBA play.

If I had a kid, he’d be the next Pele … I know he would. Look at his old man, for cryin’ out loud. I’d get him some Alexi Lalas cleats and a Valderrama hairdo and a pair of glow-in-the dark Umbros. Wouldn’t that be cooool?

Now, slow … down … a … minute.

There used to be a phrase for this kind of attitude.

“Football mentality,” people would whisper about coaches and parents who expected nothing but blind obedience and commitment to the game.

It wasn’t a compliment back then. Still isn’t.

But nowadays those old football coaches are looking downright level-headed.

You don’t see select football, or winter indoor peewee football. A good eight-game schedule is about all a kid is going to get, whether he’s 7 or 17.

And you know what? I don’t think kids ever complain about that. Seasons change, one sport’s equipment gets tossed into the garage, another sport’s gear gets polished up.

Kids go on. And they have fun. That, folks, is the key.

Kids don’t organize travel leagues, and select teams, and kids don’t set up situations designed to get them 80 games a year and a long-shot bid at a college scholarship.

Adults do. They think they’re doing the best for their own – the intent is generally truly noble – but it’s getting out of hand.

Ideally, a kid’s life is like a huge buffet. Down the serving line the kid traipses, surveying the landscape, picking at will.

Football? I’ll take a season of that. Soccer? Never tried it. Sounds good. Hockey? Sure. Trumpet? Why not.

Giving kids every possible opportunity is fantastic. A league for everyone? Great.

But we’re way beyond that now.

Somewhere, already, another soccer season is set to start.

I’m not sure I’m ready for it yet.

John Holyoke is a NEWS sportswriter.