Sam has been playing soccer in this community since he was 5: AYSO, then Stanford Soccer club, then Palo Alto Soccer Club, then PASC plus Palo Alto High School soccer. He, knows. Everyone. Seriously. And it’s been super fun to watch him through the years and now at a point where all of his friendships and coaches and experience just shine. At Zack’s futsal (indoor soccer) game on Saturday, we ran into Coach Vava, who was the lead coach of the Stanford Soccer Club (not affiliated with the university, just uses the name). Vava is a great coach, a super charismatic and unusual guy, and he runs an amazing futsal program and I totally credit him for getting Sam (and now Zack) involved with futsal. Sam loved, loved, loved playing futsal — even more than soccer. 

It was fun to watch Sam talk with Vava — they’ve kept in touch over the years and exchange text messages with some regularity. In addition to running his club soccer program, Vava now coaches the soccer team of our cross town high school rival, Gunn High School, too, so they debriefed the games that Paly (Sam’s school) and Gunn have played recently.  It was super fun to listen to.

And Vava is a bald bro too so they talked about that (though Sam is no longer bald - -he still wears his beanie but under that is a full head of darker hair :)

And it was clear to me that Sam is highly thought of by Vava and that they both were thoroughly enjoying their conversation (Vava has always called Sam “big head” 😂 — because Sam has an *enormous* head — #seriously —  so when Zack arrived and saw Vava, he said “Do you know who I am?” And then identified himself proudly as “Big Head’s brother!” ❤️)  And now that Sam is 17, Vava interacts with him more as a peer/mentor/young adult so that is fun.

If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.

And Sam walked away from the conversation with a Saturday job too: marshaling the futsal program that Vava runs. And it’s paid! He’s also volunteering for the camp that Palo Alto Soccer Club runs but it’s not paid (gets volunteer hours though so is happy about that but was psyched to hear he could get paid - even tried to boost himself into the higher echelons of the pay scale 😂). 

Leukemia  may have taken away Sam’s ability to play soccer and futsal for now, but it will never take away his significance to this community and its significance to him. 

#FULeukemia

#TeamSam