More than ten years ago, my wife and I coached a soccer team in Battle Creek, Mich. The team was filled with third and fourth-graders who had never played the game before. Many of them were deathly afraid of the ball.

We did win a game--against the other team in the league made up of players with no experience. But our best game was our last, when we faced the best team in the league, the core of which had been together since kindergarten.

We lost 4-1, but the score was 1-1 going into the last quarter, and the coach of the other team was so impressed with what our kids had learned that he called us up after the season to say just that.

That's a compliment I will never forget. But it also says something about why sports are so important for kids.

Kids sports aren't about winning. They're about learning. And often, the best way to learn is to lose.

My son Max's team lost its first game of the season 3-2. The team lost because the kids had never played games with goalies or on such a large field. Most importantly, the kids didn't play as a team. There were other problems, of course. None of the goalies had ever played the position, and the coaches (which includes me, sort of) couldn't teach them how to do a goal kick on the fly. Three goals against in the fourth quarter did them in.

But that's okay. At practice, most of the kids actually paid attention when we tired to teach them a few basics. And while they didn't seem to get it at the time, they showed on Saturday that they really did understand that the real game of soccer is about open space. Running to it, passing to it and defending against it. Max scored a goal in the fourth quarter by taking a ball in open space, dribbling all the way up the field (he was a defender at the time), dodging a couple of opponents and slotting the ball in the goal. It was textbook, the sort of run kids dream about. Max has done this before on a small field, but this time he ran (well, jogged and stumbled) thirty or forty yards toward the goal. He had to deal with open space. And he made that space his friend.

We all have to deal with open space in our lives. Certain folks have taken advantage of the open space that Acorn left in its management style and structure, and we're still reading about it. The Prez himself took advantage of some historic political open space and got himself elected. J.K. Rowling took advantage of some open space in the kids books market and made herself a mogul.

In the case of the political operatives, the open space was obvious to those who saw it. And while she has never said this openly, I think Rowling saw a bit of space when she wrote the first Harry Potter book. Fantasy had been almost overlooked in the kids arena for some twenty years or more. This despite the fact that the Lord of the Rings was still a monster seller, and any number of old fantasy series, like Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain, still sold well. Rowling knew she was on to something. A coming of age saga clothed in wizard's robes? Not a bad start. Write it well? Gold.

Open spaces contain more than riches, though. They contain the road not traveled, the idea undiscovered and the experience unlived.

Life is too short to be always fighting upstream. Most of the time, it pays to look to the open spaces, the places where most people aren't thinking. That's where the good ideas lie. That's where there something interesting might occur. That's where life happens.

Oh, and open space is where goals are scored. Just so you know.

Jon Worley is in favor of wide open spaces, as long as he doesn't have to listen to the Dixie Chicks.