Soccer champs

Fist off, I just have to say I am annoyed blogger changed things up again.  When I logged in it sent me to a weird page and it took me a full 2 minutes just to figure out how to even view my own blog. But there was a snazzy graph showing me how many people actually see my blog, and although the numbers are few, it's enough to make me feel guilty about not blogging much these days.  "Ten whole people look at my blog every day?!?!?" Ten whole people look at my blog every day, only to see that once again, I was either too busy, too lazy, or didn't feel I had anything interesting/funny/cute/frustrating or even obnoxious to talk about. 

Sigh.  (Admittedly I have a few things in the "to blog about" file, and this is one of those from a couple weeks ago.)

So Zach just finished a soccer season here.  And by "just" I mean a couple weeks ago.  He had fun.  A friend of ours was the coach, and invited Zach to play, and he had a great time.  Life was a little busy for awhile there with a couple practices during the week and games on the weekend.  Zach might have been a little timid on the field, (but who isn't when you are not used to balls flying at your person?) but he got out there and tried.  Zach said he was sorry to see it end, and he can't wait for the fall when he can play again.   

In fact he wishes there was a summer season, but I assured him that he did not in fact wish for that, because I can't think of anything more miserable than playing soccer in the summer in Arizona.  In fact, I was so happy that this season seemed to end so early.  In years past, when Nick played soccer, (with a different organization) those last couple of games were always brutal.  I swear the powers that be purposely always gave us the 1:00 time slot on the hottest day of the season.

(two points if you can spot Christopher in this picture)

Anyway, the season is over.

The kids had fun, improved in their skills a little, won or tied a few games, but it wasn't exactly what you'd call a "winning" season.

Well, not until 15 minutes after the very last game was played that is.

Unbeknownst to us, the refs all get together after every game and exchange notes on the teams, whether the kids play dirty or not, which coaches feel the need to throw temper tantrums and scream obscenities at the referees every time a call doesn't go their way, etc.  Then at the very end they hand out special sportsmanship medals to the team (teams? probably one in every division) that they think deserves it.

Anyway, you might have guessed that our team won that this time.

Our coach got a little choked up as he was presenting the kids with these medals. 

On one end of the spectrum, you have participation trophies which, honestly I think are nice, a little warm fuzzy at the end of the season.  Win or lose, everybody gets one.  But let's be honest, whether an official score is kept, the kids know whether they won or lost.  Whether their team stank or flattened every team they came up against.  And I think winning is great as long as it doesn't come with some huge price tag (integrity, etc)  I think that's life. I think sugar coating everything is a bad idea, and recognizing that kids won or lost is a good thing. Sure, they might be sad if they lost, but hopefully that will just motivate them to try harder next time, and when they do win, it will be all the more sweeter.  But I was more than thrilled to see the sportsmanship medals.  I was happy to see kids and coaches being recognized for playing fair and behaving themselves.  Too often I have sat and wondered if instead of spending time working on actual skills, if some kids were actually being taught by adults how to play dirty, possibly hurt other kids, and get away with it.  Just a couple weeks ago, I swear one kid tried to take out another kid's knee.  Seriously.

Winning season or not, Zach and his team are champions in my book.