It’s a chilly day for soccer practice at Hudson Fields outside Lewes, but 75-year-old Warren Beideman is just getting warmed up.
He gathers his under-8 soccer team around him and begins by showing them drills to work on their headers. First, he gets the kids into a semicircle and has them bounce the ball off their foreheads.
From there he expands the drill to include footwork and then shooting at the goal.
All the while, Beideman encourages, cajoles and jokes with his protégés.
“Beautiful!” he tells one youngster in his thick Philadelphia accent.
“Relax! Relax! Relax!” he tells another who is hurrying a shot.
“Good one!” he says after a goal.
Beideman started playing soccer at age 7. He got into coaching around 1959 when his own son became old enough to play. He also played semipro soccer in the Philadelphia area until he was 55 years old.
He’s been coming down to the Cape Region since 1936, and Beideman now volunteers to coach two Henlopen Soccer Club teams, the under-8s and an under-15 team.
Practice soon moves to the part the kids relish: scrimmage time. Despite his age, Beideman still has a soccer player’s short, slender, yet athletic frame, and he easily jogs down the field with the kids.
His pace is slower but he doesn’t lag too far behind the exuberant children, who hurriedly separate themselves into teams.
Beideman tries to keep control of the scrimmage. As the kids begin to bunch up and follow the ball like penguins, he blows his whistle.
“Stop! Stop! Stop!” he says, pausing and letting the kids try to figure out what they are doing wrong. “Spread out!” he commands, and from there the kids begin to be cognizant of their positioning. Beideman plays as well, passing the ball and occasionally providing some defensive resistance.
Besides his experience in soccer, Beideman also served in the Korean War in 1953 and 1954. As part of the army engineers, he said he was sent straight from Fort Meade in Maryland to the front lines in Korea.
Finally, he blows his whistle and calls an end to practice. The kids gather round him again, as he stands in the center like a grandfather telling stories on the front porch.
After informing them of their next match, he lets the kids go to the waiting cars of their parents. Beideman picks up the balls and equipment and shuffles off to his car, another day of practice in the books.
For more information on the Henlopen Soccer Club, visit www.henlopensoccerclub.org
Contact Ryan Mavity at ryanm@capegazette.com
