Sporting News

Steve and I drove 100+ miles this past weekend to watch Glamour Girl and Yes We Do Eat Fig Newtons For Breakfast Boy (AKA our four year old niece and seven year old nephew) play soccer on their town's local league. Honestly, you haven't lived until you've watched dozens of small children with no sense of team sports set loose on a giant field to chase a ball.

Glamour Girl's team is called The Duckies. Picture thirty five (or three hundred and fifty; at times it was hard to tell) tiny people in light blue shirts and little shin guards, and one determined man with a whistle trying to organize them. The impossibility of getting one's ducks in a row has never been clearer to me. The high point was when he taught them the "superhero" move where you lay with your chest on the ball, arms outstretched, pretending you can fly (watch for it in the next World Cup). After that, he blew the whistle and announced "Water break!" at which point his small charges ran full-throttle off the field and into the crowd, searching for parents and then gulping down water to quench the thirst they'd worked up in their five minutes of superhero soccer skills.

But my favorite moment was when, about twenty minutes later, the coach blew the whistle again and called the Duckies back to the pond. They were gathered in close around him to hear the secrets to the next big soccer trick, when an excited little girl yelled, "Coach--look!"
"What is it Ashley?" he asked.
"That cloud," she said, turning and pointing,"it looks just like a UNICORN!"

The Boy's game was next. There were no unicorn sightings, but that doesn't mean we didn't have fun. His team scored six or seven goals, only half of which were for the other team :)