Watching a header; Hackley (away), September 16th: This was the first game of the season. The opposing player that Jamie was guarding has just hit a header, and Jamie appears to be frowning and thinking to himself, "Wow! I'll bet that really stings!" More likely he was just trying to gauge which way the ball was going, and whether he had a chance — in the split second before the ball whistled past him — to intercept it.

A small push, but no foul; Fieldston (home), October 19th: One of the illusions about soccer is that it's a "no-contact" game composed of kids running around and gaily kicking at a ball if it comes close to them. Well, it's not quite as rough as football, but there is a lot of physical contact, and there is a legal and well-defined concept of a "tackle" in the game. The Fieldston player, #8 — who seems rather diminutive, but was a fairly good player — had control of the ball and was carrying it up the field toward the Dalton goal. Jamie had come up from behind, and was obviously trying to get the ball away from him; a little pushing and shoving ensued, and it looks like the Fieldston boy was trying to pass the ball to his teammate on the right. In some cases, the referee would call a foul; in other cases, they let it go. No foul was called on this play.

Remarkably, there was little or no verbal interchange between the players in moments like this — one would have expected the Fieldston player to shout at Jamie, "Hey, get your hands off me, you big bully!" whereupon Jamie would have shouted back, "Well, get out of the way and let me get the ball, you little wimp!" But at most, there was probably only a grunt or a four-letter epithet muttered under their breath.

A flying kick; Fieldston (home), October 19th: For many of the games, I positioned myself at the end of the soccer field, by the opponent's goal-box, so I could watch the Dalton team, and take pictures of them head-on, as they brought the ball downfield and attacked the goal. But this made it very difficult to take pictures when they were very close to me, because I was typically using a high-powered telephoto lens; in this case, it was a 500-mm lens. Also, the action moved so fast when the Dalton team was attacking that it was very hard to focus a shot quickly enough to take it before the action had moved off somewhere else. In this picture, Jamie was bringing the ball across the width of the field, and had leaped off the ground to kick it at the goal. I only had a split second to snap the shot, and unfortunately cut off part of his head; even so, it gives a good indication of the tremendous momentum of the players as they kicked and ran at the same time ...

Preparing for a throw-in from the sidelines; Horace Mann (away), October 26th: In most of the Dalton games, Jamie was the chosen one to throw the ball in from the sidelines if it went out of bounds; he had the strongest throw of anyone on the team, and could usually hurl it half-way across the width of the soccer field. I shot this picture from the other side of the field, and half-way down the length of the field; but with a 500mm lens, it looks like I'm standing right next to him. In this game, played at Horace Mann, in the suburbs of Westchester, the soccer field was adjacent to the school's tennis courts; that's what you see in the background behind Jamie. He frequently twirled the ball in his hands for a moment, and then made a quick dash to the edge of the sidelines in order to throw it as close as possible to one of his teammates.

The game was played on a beautiful, crisp afternoon amidst stunning scenery of orange and fiery-red autumn foliage. The Horace Mann football team was having a practice session in a small field immediately adjacent to the soccer players, and the Dalton girls' volleyball team had also traveled up to Horace Mann for a game — so there was quite a crowd of people milling around. Jamie had a good game, and the team played well — but Horace Mann had a much stronger team, and we lost, 4-1.

Concentrating on the sideline throw-in; Riverdale (home), November 2nd: Jamie's throw-in's provided a number of opportunities for great photos; in this one, he's in the midst of his short dash up to the sideline, about the raise the ball over his head to toss it in. As you can see, he's frowning and concentrating intently — because he's watching which way the various players are moving around on the field, in order to see where he should throw it to maximize the chances that one of his own teammates will get the ball. This picture was taken during the final game of the season, on Tuesday, November 2nd.

Jump ball; Brooklyn Poly (away), October 28th: The phenomenon shown in this picture — jumping high in the air to try to "head" the ball — occurred often in the games, but I didn't get many shots of Jamie involved in such maneuvers. In this case, the ball was coming from behind Jamie, from high in the air, and descending into an area occupied by one other Dalton player and an opponent from the other team. Jamie had had only enough time to look over his shoulder and get a sense of where the ball was likely to go before leaping into the air with his back to the flight-path of the ball. It was in vain, as you can see in the picture: the ball sailed a foot or so over his head. It appears that the Brooklyn Poly player — who has his eye on the ball — has a good chance of hitting the ball with his head. None of this had any consequence: it took place in the middle of the game, and it wasn't until the second overtime that Jamie scored the only goal of the game.

Corner kick; Brooklyn Poly Prep (away), October 28th: This was the next-to-last game of the season, and by far the most exciting of all the games I saw: Jamie scored the only goal of the game, in the final ten seconds of the second overtime period of the game. It wasn't the kick shown in this picture that won the game, and I was unfortunately unable to get any pictures of the maneuvers that led to Jamie's actual goal.

The game was played against Poly Prep, on their school field in the far reaches of Brooklyn, right next to the Verazzano Bridge where the New York Marathon begins. It was a warm day, and there was a brilliant dose of sunlight coming in from a low angle in the western sky; it cast everything either in brilliant colors or dark shadows, depending on where they were standing. You can see, for example, the sunlight shining on Jamie's fingers, and his shadow extending off to the left.

In this picture, the ball had gone out of bounds, or a foul had been committed. In any case, Dalton was allowed to kick the ball back into play from the corner of the field, down near the Poly Prep goal. The red flag marks the exact corner of the field, and you can get a sense of sideline extending up toward the forefront of the picture.

Jamie's objective here is to kick the ball across the field, so that it's about head-high as it crosses in front of the Poly Prep goal; meanwhile, a large gaggle of Dalton attackers is busy positioning themselves to be able to hit a "header" and knock Jamie's kick into the goal. And at the same time, of course, the Poly defenders are trying to shove the Dalton kids out of the way, and position themselves to hit a header and get the ball as far away from the goal as possible. They apparently succeeded on this occasion, because Jamie's kick did not lead to a goal. Nevertheless, the final result was a glorious win for Dalton, 1-0. Jamie remarked later that it was the best game he had played in his entire life.

Stomping on the ball; Poly Prep (away), October 28th: As mentioned elsewhere, the Brooklyn Poly game was played in the dazzling light of a late-afternoon sun that shone from low on the horizon. It was right in Jamie's face as he attempted to stop and control the ball in this picture; meanwhile, much of the field in the background was already in deep shadows. One of the things that amazed me when I began watching Jamie's soccer playing was the degree of control that he had over the ball. I had always thought of soccer as a more-or-less brute-force game, composed of nothing more than chasing the ball up and down the field and kicking it whenever the opportunity arose. But the good players had the ability to "catch" a ball that was flying through the air, and manipulate it to a dead stop on the ground, whereupon they would whirl around and head off in a different direction with it. I've seen even more dazzling displays of acrobatics from the World Cup players in the past year, but it's always been on television, and thus somewhat removed from reality. It was even more amazing to see one's own son doing something like this — after all, the normal parental reaction to the ordinary running and kicking activities was "Well, if I lost a few (dozen) pounds and got myself back in shape, I could do that, too."

But after watching a few of these dazzling ball-manipulating tricks, I had to sigh and shake my head and admit that I had never been to accomplish such physical feats of wonder. The ball in this picture appears to be stationary, but it had probably just landed from a distance of ten feet or more, and was about to bounce up over Jamie's head; his objective was to stop the ball, control it, and carry it back up the field. This particular play didn't lead to a goal, but as mentioned above, we won the game, 1-0, on Jamie's last-minute overtime goal.

Defying gravity; Brooklyn Poly (home), October 5th: Almost all of the kicks taken by the soccer players looked smooth and fluid, and Jamie's were no exception. But if you managed to get a snapshot of a player in the middle of a kick, they sometimes appeared to be defying the law of gravity. In this shot, Jamie has just finished walloping the ball with a mighty kick; the ball has already flown forward, and is just to the left of the Dalton player in the foreground.

You can see that Jamie is still watching the ball intently, as part of his follow-through, to ensure that it's going where he wanted it to go. Meanwhile, his body is in a position that appears ludicrous — you would imagine that another picture taken a split-second later would show him lying in a heap on the ground. But the momentum of the kick carries his kicking leg across, and he recovered smoothly to continue running up the field.

Alas, it was to no avail: we lost the game 3-1. This is the same Brooklyn Poly team that Jamie scored his magnificent double-overtime goal against, in the next-to-last game of the season. But this game was played earlier in the season, on our home field, and the Poly team proved too strong for us to overcome.

Mid-game huddle; Dwight (home), September 26th: In the same Dwight game mentioned above, the team huddled down near their goal post at half-time. The coach can be seen on the right, with sunglasses and a "keeper" string looped around his neck. Jamie is in the foreground, looking rather disgusted with the state of affairs in the game. We were ahead, 1-0, at this point, but he felt that we should have been able to score several more points if our attacks had been more coordinated. The main reason I took this shot was because of the background: about a quarter mile beyond the soccer field, Randall's Island comes to an abrupt end, and a part of Long Island Sound (I think it's Flushing Bay) is visible.

All during the games in the fall, there were tug-boats and tankers and ships of all kinds moving back and forth. On the far right side, the bay ends at the runways of LaGuardia Airport — so it was also quite common to see takeoffs and landings of airplanes all through the game, though they were far enough away that the roar of the jets wasn't audible.

Dancing with the ball; Dwight (home), September 26th: In this shot, it appears that Jamie is engaged in some kind of complicated rumba or fox-trot with the ball. I think the situation was much simpler: he had just finished kicking the ball with his left foot, which has now crossed over in front of his right foot. The ball is just starting to rise from the ground, and may well sail over the head of the Dwight opponent in the right foreground.

Racing after the ball; Dwight (home), September 26th: In this picture, Jamie is racing to capture the ball and bring it downfield to the opponent's goal. One of the opposing players appears to be lunging toward the ball, but the distances are distorted because of the 300mm lens I was using: he was probably 10 feet back, and had no chance to out-race Jamie. The other Dwight player, as well as Jamie's teammate, have obviously reached the same conclusion, for they're standing flat-footed to see how the action will turn out.

In the background, you can see the Dalton goalie in his bright yellow uniform, hands on hips, watching passively, grateful that the action is far away from him. I didn't take many notes on the games during the season, but I wrote the following in my computer-journal on the evening after this game finished: "Dalton attacked throughout the game, but had a terrible time trying to kick goals. Through a fluke, Dwight scored a goal mid-way through the second half, and we couldn't get ahead, even with two overtime periods.

The Wall; Hackley (away), September 16th: This picture shows a phenomenon that I had never heard of before I started watching Jamie's soccer games: a "wall" of defenders trying to interpose themselves between an attacking player (who has been given a penalty kick) and the goal. The goal is partially visible as a red post in the background, and a group of four Dalton players is trying to act as a human shield to prevent the Hackley player from making a penalty-shot kick directly into the goal.

In situations like this, the biggest concern that many of the players have is that the ball will hit them, at high speed, right in the groin. Hence they often clutch both hands over their private parts; one of the players is still grabbing himself as if his life depends on it.

Another common strategy is for the players to lock arms, in order to form a more solid wall; that's why #16 has his arm linked around #12 in the picture. As I snapped the picture, the ball has gone hurtling by the first three players; Jamie seems to have lost track of it at this point, but has pulled away from the rest of the wall. It looks as if the Hackley player decided not to try kicking over or through the Dalton wall, but instead to try a cross-kick to someone else farther over on the side; indeed, it might have been intended for the Hackley player who can be seen streaking along behind the Dalton boys in the background.

Meanwhile, the referee, in the bottom right corner of the picture, is watching the whole thing to make sure that everyone is behaving properly. The Dalton team was not in terribly good physical shape for the game, having had only a few practice sessions before the beginning of the season; by the middle of the game, most of the boys were winded and ragged. We lost this one, 5-1.

Exhorting the team to win; Fieldston (home), October 19th: Most of Jamie's soccer games began with a team huddle, in which the starting team members discussed their strategy and got themselves pumped up. Jamie was one of three co-captains for the team (the boy in the blue baseball cap was one of the other co-captains) and he often led the final team cheer before they ran off to take their positions.

Unfortunately, the cheer didn't work this time: Dalton lost the game. There's a small sign indicating that the game had not actually begun when this photo was taken: one of the boys in the background, to Jamie's right, is wearing an earring, and a boy on the left is wearing a wristwatch. The referees required everyone to remove ornamental jewelry of all kinds before the game began. Everyone in this game was wearing a white uniform (the color worn by the home team) except for the goalie, in the background on Jamie's left; he wore a canary-yellow jersey and shorts that you'll see in one of the other pictures. Each of the players on the team had a personality of his own, and we got to know them all in much the same way baseball fans know the personalities and statistics of their entire team. Alas, we lost this game, 4-2.

Walking downfield; Collegiate (away), October 21st: This picture was taken in Central Park, during a game between Dalton and another Manhattan private school, Collegiate. The private schools in the city typically have no athletic fields of their own, so the obvious place to play an inter-school soccer game is Central Park. However, the Central Park playing fields have been reserved for years in advance by various schools, clubs, and other organizations; in its early years, Dalton was an all-girl's school that placed little emphasis on competitive sports, and thus never bothered reserving any of the fields. Collegiate, on the other hand, is an all-boy's school (John Kennedy, Jr. attended school there, among other notables) and has managed to grab one of the Central Park soccer fields (which doubles as a baseball field, soccer field, picnic ground, etc.) as its own home field.

The brown patch that you see in the foreground of the picture is actually part of the infield of an adjacent softball field; it was pure mud by the middle of the soccer game, and it made for rather uneven play. Thus, even though this game was physically close to our home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and only about three blocks away from the Dalton School on the Upper East Side, it was nevertheless considered an "away" game for the team; hence they wore their blue uniforms.

Collegiate has another interesting tradition: it has no football team. As a result, all of the huge, strong kids who would normally have played on a football team played instead on the soccer team. Collegiate had had an unbeaten record for the past two or three years prior to 1994, and they won this game, 4-0. Dalton held them scoreless for the first half, which was very exciting — but by the middle of the second half, it was pretty clear that we were going to be wiped out. In this picture, Jamie is walking back down the field after Collegiate has just scored a goal; from the "body language," you can see that he's pretty dejected.

Concentrating on the sideline throw-in; Riverdale (home), November 2nd: This picture was taken during the final game of the season, on Tuesday, November 2nd. Daylight savings time had ended the previous weekend, and it was suddenly getting dark at 5 PM; the games normally began at 4 PM, which had posed no problem earlier in the fall, but now led to muted mutterings from the parents that perhaps the time-periods for each half should be reduced to something less than the standard 40 minutes. This picture was taken relatively early in the game, when there was still some sunlight — but I was only able to get a single roll of pictures before it had grown so dark that I couldn't see the kids, and they couldn't see each other. Fortunately, we won the game, 2-1.

The effort of the throw-in; Fieldston (home), October 19th: Okay, okay, so you've seen enough pictures of Jamie getting ready to throw in the ball — here's one just as the ball is leaving his hands. From the expression on his face, you can get a sense of the enormous effort he put into the throw, and why the ball tended to sail half-way across the field. Actually, it looks like he's about to burst into tears, but this was one of the milder pictures: I took several others where his tongue is sticking out and he looks like he's gone stark raving mad. Jamie remarked that the toss required such effort that his arms often felt completely dead by the middle of the game, and the length of his toss grew shorter and shorter in the second half. Notice that his front foot has landed right on the boundary of the soccer field, without going over, and that both feet are on the ground that the instant the ball leaves his hands — this being a soccer rule that he occasionally violated, and which the referees occasionally noted. Despite Jamie's heroic efforts here, we lost this game, 3-1.

Beginning the run for a sideline throw-in; Fieldston (home), October 19th: As noted above, Jamie often had the task of throwing the ball in from the sidelines for the Dalton team. In this picture, he is just beginning his run up to the edge of the sidelines; you can see a faint white chalk-line in the foreground that marks the boundary of the playing field. I liked this picture particularly because of the colors of the trees in the background, which were made muted and fuzzy by the telephoto lens that I used (a 300mm lens on this occasion). But what I didn't realize is that the camera would also record all of the paper and trash lying in the grass on the sidelines. This was not a school playground, but a public field on Randall's Island (located in the East River, midway between Manhattan and Long Island, just beneath the Triboro Bridge toll station). All in all, the playing conditions weren't too bad on the field — but it was deserted and windswept, far away from any public transportation of signs of civilization. We were fortunate, I suppose, that scraps of paper were the only form of refuse in the area.

Pausing for breath; Riverdale (away), October 7th: Although soccer appears to be a game of perpetual motion, there were often opportunities for the boys to pause for a moment and catch their breath — while waiting for penalty kicks, or when the ball had been carried far away from the player's normal position on the field. Such was the case when I took this shot of Jamie; you can get a sense of the level of physical exertion from the color in his cheeks. I don't remember why I decided to take this picture at the time — but the reason I pulled it out of the mass of photos was the combination of the color in Jamie's cheeks, the sunlight in his hair, and the backdrop of dark green trees in the background.

Oh, yes, the score: we won this game, 2-1. Victory was all the sweeter because the game was played on the opponent's home field. Unlike Dalton, whose "home" games were played on an island miles away from the school, most of the suburban Westchester schools like Riverdale had vast campuses with football fields and soccer fields galore. The fact that the game was right at the school tended to ensure a larger crowd of spectators — in this case, Riverdale spectators, plus a small group of loyal Dalton fans (mostly mothers) who trudged around from one game to another. In any case, the Dalton boys were particularly pleased to have beaten a team in front of their own fans.

Directing traffic on a downfield run; Riverdale (home), November 2nd: As noted earlier, this was the final game of the season. Jamie is watching a teammate bring the ball downfield at this point, and is apparently trying to set up a play. He's probably pointing with his left hand to one of his teammates, to indicate where he wants the ball to be passed. Meanwhile, his teammates and the coach on the sidelines are probably yelling, "Time! Time!" which means, "You've got lots of time to do whatever you want — don't rush things." If the Riverdale player gets much closer, which Jamie might not see (if he is behind Jamie's field of vision), then everyone will begin yelling, "Man on! Man on!" which, loosely speaking, means "There's a man coming up on you, and if you're not careful he's going to take the ball away from you. Pass it now, or at least be aware that you're about to be under attack!" This one, as noted earlier, was a victory for Dalton, 2-1.