Would you bet against your own child in sports?

Would you bet against your own child at their sporting event?

John Curley would.

Curley related his conflicting experience on KIRO Radio’s Tom and Curley Show.

His daughter, Charlie, plays soccer. And as a good father does, Curley stands on the sidelines each game and watches.

“You stand there on the sidelines and you’re forced to talk to a bunch of parents you don’t really want to talk to,” he said.

“There’s some joker that owns George’s Restaurant in Kirkland. He’s some Greek guy, really opinionated,” Curley said. “He says, ‘I’ll bet you two bucks.’ I said ‘OK, what do you want to do?’ He said ‘I bet you two bucks your daughter scores.’ I said, ‘You want me to bet against my daughter?'”

That’s exactly what fellow soccer dad Pete Mangouras proposed.

“So I end up betting against my daughter, Charlie, who is a striker so if anybody is going to score on the team, pretty good chance it’s going to be her,” Curley said.

But as co-host Tom Tangney pointed out, there’s not a lot of scoring in soccer, so it could be a safe bet.

“That’s what I was thinking,” Curley noted.

But then it happened. Charlie took possession of the ball, drove it down the field, passed her opponents by one-by-one. and finally slammed that ball into the net.

“And this guy next to me goes, ‘Hey, pay up,'” Curley said.

“It bothered me when she scored. I didn’t feel an overwhelming sense of joy like most parents would when their kid scores in a soccer game, which happens like once every 15 years,” he said. “It happened and I was like, ‘Damn.'”

And the physical sensation of handing over the money didn’t help.

“Then she comes down and what does she do? She scores again. Another $2! And that point I was like, ‘Gee whiz, this is starting to hurt,” Curley said.

Mangouras joined the two hosts over the phone and said it wasn’t exactly as Curley explained. Curley took $6 off of Mangouras while betting on a previous game.

“All we get to do is watch and we have some pretty decent conversations, but we’re watching so adding that element of a small-time, friendly bet, you get excited,” Mangouras said. “You can’t even sit down on the sidelines, you got a nice little wager going and it’s all about smiling and having fun. And your daughter was fantastic. She ripped that ball!”

“All’s well that ends well. I got $4 out of the whole day. It paid for half of my chicken quesadilla for the match,” he said.

But would Mangouras bet against his own kid?

“I would definitely hear what the bet is,” he said.