Twenty-five years later, the author's recall of long-forgotten high-school math saves the day and allows him to turn a parallelogram into a rectangular field for kids soccer.
I am thankful that teachers got a special day of recognition on Tuesday, May 3, which is National Teacher Day. But I do admit that as a student I didn’t always see the value in what we were studying, especially in high school, when the prevailing thought was that we already knew everything, or at least everything that was truly important in life. That certainly was the case in anything to do with algebra and geometry.
But an event 25 years later was to prove me wrong. As my sons signed up for soccer, the call went out to parents to help out. I raised my hand for the field striping crew. Our task: Transform a forlorn, grassy expanse of a North Bend park into an active complex of 12 small soccer fields.
No problem. We had a long reel tape measure, white field spray paint and nifty little paint machines that laid down perfect stripes, just like the pros. Our plan was to create the first field, then use it as a template for the 11 others. We’d be done in a couple of hours, have time for a quick beverage and feel great that we had made such an important contribution to our kids’ budding athletic careers.
We measured the first field: 30 yards long, 15 yards wide, and even remembered the midfield line. A miniature Wembley! Those kids, with their shin guards stretching from ankles to knees, would love this first pitch. Maybe a future Sounder among them? This was going to be so cute. High-fives were exchanged by the dad volunteers.
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But there was a problem. The field was, well, crooked. The measurements were correct, but the corners weren’t square. Not even close.
“It’s not a true rectangle,” I observed. A word ascended from somewhere deep within. “It’s a parallelogram.”
More words came out: “A parallelogram is a quadrilateral with opposite sides parallel, and therefore opposite angles equal,” I recited. But, I clarified, “It’s not a rhombus. That’s good.”
The guys threw quizzical looks my way. Then something else came out: “A squared plus B squared equals C squared. You know: the Pythagorean theorem. That’s what we have to do to get a square field.”
Yes, high-school math finally had value. I remembered the exact class and teacher and me taking frantic notes because the Pythagorean theorem would be on the weekly quiz, after which it could be discarded like so many other facts and dates and conjugations that were crowding our sophomoric heads.
There was more. “We’ll measure off the hypotenuse, using the corner as the starting point, just as you would with one of those little compasses with the sharp point and pencil,” I said. “The true opposite corner will come from where the hypotenuse and the leg, or in our case, the sideline, intersect. Then we can make the midfield line, after which we can find the exact center of the field. That will enable us to create the center circle, or circumference, by using the radius.”
We straightened out the first field, then in impressive teamwork knocked out the remaining 11. Everyone admitted it was quite an accomplishment. A field of molehills was now a quite professional complex of pitches. The kids would indeed love them. And we had time for that beer. My math teachers would have been proud of all of this, probably even the beer.
I went on to stripe dozens of other fields over the years, each getting a little larger as my young soccer players worked their way up through the leagues. I’m sure the field crews today use some kind of app or surveyors’ equipment. Nonetheless, when I retired from volunteer field-striping duty I left index cards with all the dimensions and formulas for the next guys to use.
I imagine that they weren’t paying attention in math.
Tim Talevich is a writer and editor in North Bend.
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