Another October down the drain.
In all this baseball madness I was not in the mood to write about much else. So some catching up is in order. Let’s begin with wrapping up the younger two girls’ fall sports experiences.
When we last discussed sports, C. was building up for her final race of the year, the City Championship meet. This was going to be the biggest meet St. P’s ran in, with something like 27 schools taking part. So big, in fact, that the girls and boys ran on different days.
Once again, she did awesome. She finished 41st overall, 20th in her grade. She was the third St. P’s girl to finish; first of their third graders. Most importantly, she cut her time for the fourth-straight race. In her first individual race in early September, she ran 3K in 16:03. In the City meet, she finished in 15:23. Dropping 40 seconds in five weeks is pretty damn good!
She was very excited with her race. When I found her in the mass of humanity at the finish line, she smiled and said, “I threw up in my mouth a little while I was running!” Based on her tone, I think she contributed some of her speed to that near disaster.
She loved her first year of cross country. Her coaches were pleased with how far she came this year. And I think we’re all excited to see what she can do next year if she runs through the summer and when she’s in the top half of her age group.
L’s soccer season ran until the Sunday before Halloween. After that rough start, where she looked over-matched physically and her team got stomped, things got much better. She scored at least one goal in every game and her team never lost again. She continued to improve her ball control, her passing got really good, and she was often lining up to use her left foot in traffic, something her coach wanted her to focus on.
There was a game mid-season that we feared would be like the season opener. Their opponents looked to be heavy with second graders. One boy in particular looked to be closer to 9 than 8. While we watched the kids warm up, we were a little worried.
Misplaced worry, it turned out. Our kids ran circles around the bigger kids. The stole the ball and passed away. They ran to space and waited for a teammate to find them. They peppered the goalie with shots all day. The final score ended up being something ridiculous like 10–1.[1]
The biggest thing is she had fun. She loves soccer. She can’t wait for practice nights and Sundays when games roll around. She’s lucky that she’s had a coach the past two seasons who works the kids hard, but also keeps it fun. For their last practice, he turned them loose and had them play a modified version of Australian Rules football. She was rolling around with the second grade boys and having a great time.
And now we’re done with sports for a bit. M. will begin volleyball practice over Christmas break. So we have nearly two months where we don’t have to fight traffic to get to 5:30 practices four nights a week, or have our weekends dominated by games.
- We know this because the older sisters, all fifth and sixth graders, made a scoreboard and were tracking goals. Thank goodness the other team’s parents were sitting across the field. ↩