D's Notebook

Tag: kickball (Page 1 of 6)

Kickball Wrap Up (Forever)

September 8, 2022 /

Well, it’s over.

L’s team went out with a whimper in their final two kickball games, losing 21–7 on Tuesday then getting run-ruled 42–13 on Wednesday, ending the season at 2–5. I believe that was the first time they had a losing record.[1]

These two games were more of the same. We couldn’t kick or field, and it killed us. In the Tuesday game, against the team we beat to start the season, we were up 4–0 after one then gave up eight runs in the second and were dead after that. L went 1–3 with just a double. They against the division champs Wednesday we were never in it, down 9–1 after the first inning.

At least we closed out the game strong. As we came up for our last kicks in the bottom of the fifth our coach told the girls we needed home runs from everyone. The first girl kicked one. The next girl kicked one. The next girl got on base with a single. And then L came up.

Again, she had zero home runs on the season. Only once had she really been close. So far in this game she was 1–2 with a triple. This time she crushed the ball, her best kick of the year, sending it to deep center, between the fielders. But, as I’ve shared many times, outfielders get the ball in much quicker at this level. Didn’t matter. She was on her horse, as they say. The girl in front of her is super fast and L had almost caught her by the time they got to second. She was a step behind her at third and I could tell there was no way she was stopping. A good throw might have gotten her but the relay was off line and the girls scored right on top of each other.

Finally the elusive home run. And in the final kick of her career!

Three of the next four girls made outs and the season was mercifully over.

Although the results sucked I really enjoyed most of the games this season because I got to keep score with some good people. One mom has a son who is in C’s grade and they’ve socialized a bit, so we had some common ground. I had kept score with one dad before and he is more chill than me, so pleasant to work with. A second dad has three daughters the same ages as my three, and we’ve come across each other several times over the years. We had two games this season and great conversations while we watched our youngest square off. And a second mom I had two games with has been both the kickball and volleyball coordinator at her school, so we shared stories of all that comes with that. Wednesday she had another mom sit with us so she could teach her how to keep score (I assume this new mom has younger girls). When she introduced us, she said, “He’s the best scorekeeper I’ve ever worked with. He’ll explain everything and you’ll never get lost.”

Awwww, in my last game I got the best compliment of my life!

If you saw my Facebook post last night, I crunched the numbers for our family. Since M began playing in the spring of her third grade year, our girls played a combined 29 seasons of kickball. That works out to somewhere between 200–210 games. I figure I kept score or coached for 90% of those games, most misses either coming that first season before I was handed the scorebook or because I was coaching one girl while another played somewhere else. That’s a lot of kickball!

To be honest, I’m a little bummed I didn’t keep better records and know exactly how many total games we played and what the family’s overall record is. Alas…

I do know the girls combined to play in two division playoffs, two City semifinals, and five City championship games. M’s team was the only one to win a championship, and that was a shared title after a week of rainouts. C’s team was the only one never to make it to any kind of playoff, something she took personally for awhile.[2] Blame her assistant coach (me) for that. And I do know that our overall record, as a family, was well over .500. That was mostly thanks to an elite athlete on M’s team and then all those home runs from L for five years.

Folks who know us well will recall that my kickball story began the night S and I went on our first date. While making small talk as we waited for our table at dinner, I asked if she played any sports growing up. When she said CYO volleyball and kickball, I laughed in her face. Next thing I knew she was jabbing a finger in my chest and telling me that kickball was a real sport. Pretty sure I laughed some more.

And, famously, the real joke was on me. I married that Catholic girl from Indianapolis, moved here, had three daughters who went to Catholic school, and spent the bulk of their grade and middle school years representing St P’s on the kickball diamonds of Indy.

The first game of M’s fourth grade year, her coach walked over to me and said, “I hear you’re a sports writer. Can you keep score?” Soon I was reading up on the rules so I could understand what the hell was going on. About a year later when the kickball coordinator job came open, that same coach told me she thought I would be great at it. I made the mistake of sending one email asking the out-going coordinator what all was involved in the position. All it ever takes is one email to volunteer yourself for any school role, and for the next four years I ran the program. I helped coach L’s team their first year, although the moms who had all played kickball in their CYO days did most of the work. I helped coach C’s team for five seasons over three years.

It was a pretty good run. I hope the girls have as many great memories from their kickball years as I do.

  1. L didn’t play in the spring of fourth grade, when she decided she didn’t like kickball, and the team may have been under .500 that season.  ↩

  2. Their best shot was having a lead in the last game of the season going into the seventh inning against the team they were tied for first with, and then having a total meltdown and giving up 25 runs to lose. Ugh.  ↩

Kickball Notes

September 1, 2022 /

This season was supposed to be L and her team’s final run to kickball glory. Even with a tough schedule we figured they would be battling in every game and, because of the strength of their division, remain in the mix for a City championship berth right up until the end of the season.

Instead it’s been a bit of a mess.

Things started well; they won their first two games. They beat a solid team by one, scoring six runs in the bottom of the 7th to comeback for the W on opening day. Next they run-ruled a perennially bad team. Then everything went to shit.

They’ve had three straight run-rule losses. They’ve lost by 26, 31, and 27 in four-and-a-half innings each time. In the last two games we’ve been behind 14–0 and 13–1 after one inning. What we used to do to other teams is now being done to us. Paybacks, etc…

Our coach, who is perpetually sunny and upbeat, looked at me after last night’s beatdown and asked, “What is wrong with us?”

The answer is pretty simple: the three teams that have beaten us all have players that look like young women while ours still look like kids. Last night we had a right fielder playing literally in the bushes that bordered the field and St J was still kicking the ball over her head. The three teams that have crushed us all had 4–5 girls who could not only blast the ball, but place it in the right spot. They either found the holes between our outfielders, or knew which of our girls had zero chance to catch anything kicked at her and sent balls her way. I think we’ve given up more home runs in those three games than we’ve given up in two or three seasons combined.

We also make a lot of small defensive errors that turn innings into bad ones. Last night in one inning L over-ran a ball and allowed it to drop, another girl dropped an easy fly ball, and two other girls ran into each other and allowed a ball to drop. Instead of only giving up 4–5 runs, we gave up the limit of 14. That’s been the story in every big inning this year.

Meanwhile we have no one who can kick anymore. L gets on base consistently (she’s 15–19 so far) but hasn’t kicked a home run all year. Or really been close to one. This is the same kid who had 22 home runs in a season 18 months ago. She can’t kick as far as she used to and the outfielders are better at this age, so on the rare occasion she gets ahold of one, they still hold her to a double or triple. None of our other girls who used to boot the ball are doing any better. I think we’ve had only two or three home runs all season, and have only had one 14-run inning.

There are two games left in their season. We play St B’s, the team we beat by one, on Tuesday and then the team that waxed us last night on Wednesday. I would like to hope that St J’s would take it easy on us in our final home game, but they have a one-game lead for the division and can’t afford to slip up. We are just hoping we can beat St B’s on Tuesday to get one more win before the girls hang up their kickball visors for the last time.

Weekend Notes

May 2, 2022 /

I was going to begin this post with a complaint about the weather. Then I realized that our recent run of swings between warm and cool are what spring is supposed to be like. Sure, it would be great if it was 60 for two weeks, then 65 for two weeks, and so on. Recent years have seemed a lot more like 40s until April 10 then it’s suddenly 85. The bouncing back-and-forth is normal, we’ve just grown accustomed to the abnormal.

The weather was good enough last week for me to spend two full days outside prepping the pool and pool area for the crew to come open it for the season tomorrow. Lots of power washing, scrubbing, scooping of leaves, etc. That water was cooooold when I I had to stick my hand in it! That’s how I spent pretty much the entire school day both Thursday and Friday. Thus my lack of content.

Over the weekend L’s team had another basketball tournament. They won all four games and took the championship. I must disclose that two of those games were against sixth grade teams. One of them was a 40-point win, the other was by 16. That second team was good, and nasty. The refs were calling no fouls so they were shoving and grabbing our girls the entire game. One of our girls even got hit in the face, a hit that drew blood, and the ref standing four feet away didn’t call a foul. Unbelievable. Fortunately our girls were poised and put them away.

That first sixth grade team, not sure why they were playing in a seventh grade tournament when they were not good. Losing by 40 doesn’t make you any better.

The championship game was a big, cathartic win for many of our girls. Our coach and five of his players have played against that group for years in both AAU and middle school ball. And they had never beat them. L lost to them twice this winter, so even she was 0-fer. We led pretty much the entire game, a couple times by 12, and held on late to win by three. Another set of medals for our girls.

Now I’ve buried the lede a bit: L did not play at all this weekend. Friday at recess she fell and cracked her tailbone on the ground. I guess she was jumping, landed on a ball, and fell straight backwards. She was in crazy pain Friday and could barely walk when she got home.

When she woke Saturday the pain wasn’t any better. Fortunately the first three games of the tournament were easy wins. They could have used her in the title game, as our guards really struggled to handle the other team’s pressure in the last five minutes. Having another solid ball handler would have kept the game from getting close, I bet.

As of this morning the pain still had not improved. There’s not much you can do, according to S. Whether it’s just a deep bone bruise or a fracture, the only thing L can do is rest, treat the pain, and wait for it to heal. She was super bummed to sit on the bench all weekend. She will miss the rest of kickball season. She will miss all her basketball practices at least this week and maybe next. This coming weekend is off for basketball, so that’s good.

What she is most worried about is our first out-of-town tournament in three weeks in Louisville. That seems right on the border of when she will be cleared to play again, assuming no setbacks. She really wants to be a part of that weekend.

In her abbreviated kickball season she went 16–20 with six home runs. The team had two easy wins then lost a tough game to eighth graders last week. They play that team again tomorrow and we hoped we could steal that to force a playoff. But with L out that’s probably not in the cards. Tonight they have to play with just eight players because another girl has a conflict. I don’t think this game will be a problem, but when you’re down two fielders dumb things can happen on defense.

So that’s a big, ol’ bummer. We just got her knees checked two weeks ago and the sports medicine doc confirmed her pain is just Osgood-Schlatter and there’s no need to worry about it. He also confirmed she has plenty of open space in her growth plates so she will continue to add some height for at least a little longer.

I’ll admit I was a little mad that she got hurt in recess. It’s one thing to get hurt in a game, although when she pitched in kickball I got nervous about her getting some kind of hand/finger injury. But recess?!?! Seriously?!?!

The dad of one of L’s friends made a good point when I admitted I was a little annoyed by the cause of her injury. “Yeah,” he said, “it’s hard when they get older and start playing sports more seriously to still let them be kids and just have fun sometimes.”

She better have been having fun in the moments before the cracked her ass on the ground.

Fall Kickball Wrap Up

September 16, 2021 /

Another kickball season is complete.

L’s team was supposed to make up three games that had been rained out. One school never responded to multiple messages from our coach about a reschedule date. It’s the team L kicked six homers in one game against a year ago, and we’ve generally beaten them like rented mules since third grade. So I don’t blame them for avoiding the game.

Monday we played on a crazy field that has a fence in short left field. C’s team played there three times and that stupid fence always got in their heads. Her team had at least four girls who should have been able to kick it over the fence. While we had multiple balls bounce over for ground-rule doubles, no one on her team ever flew the fence for a home run.

In the top of the first Monday, our second kicker put one over the fence. She did it again in the third inning. And another girl kicked two over. L was super excited to get her shot, but kept kicking line drives that bounced off the fence for Green Monster-style singles. We were up by 40-some runs in the fifth and L knew it was her last shot before the mercy rule kicked in. A new pitcher gave her a fast pitch that she neatly deposited over the fence.[1] She raced around the bases with a satisfied look on her face.

L made sure to let C know that her team kicked five over the fence in one game while C’s team couldn’t put one over the fence in 21 innings. Sisterly love!

L also made a crazy play in the outfield where she cut off a screaming line drive and threw a perfect strike to second to hold the kicker to a single. After the play she stood in center and flexed. I laughed out loud.

Wednesday night was supposed to be our final makeup game, against a team we knew we would hammer. As we left home L said she was going to try to break her record of six homers in a single game. This is another weird field – the church is awfully close in left field but if you kick to center or right the ball can roll for days – plus she hasn’t kicked as well this year. But I told her to go for it.

When we arrived the opposing coach came over and asked, since it was their last game and they had five 8th graders playing their final game ever, if we would mind if they forfeited the official contest and the teams just played for fun so she could move girls around to different positions.

Our coach said sure, although there was some grumbling from our girls. It ended up being a good time. Both teams played girls in new spots. It was fun to see some of our girls who are often in the outfield get to pitch or play first base. There was zero stress because no one was keeping score. Both teams were laughing and having fun. You know, how youth sports should be.

Since I wasn’t keeping score I lost track of L kicking a few times. She did not kick seven home runs. I think she went something like 4–6 with one homer. Since this was officially a forfeit I’ll not add those numbers into her season totals.

She ended up going 26–31 with seven home runs in five games. She slightly raised her kicking average to .839 from last spring’s .825. But the seven homers were way down from 22, although she did play two more games last spring.

We are already putting together a strength program so she can get those power numbers back up next spring.

The team went 3–2 plus the forfeit, crushing the bad teams but not getting closer than 14 runs to the two top teams. Kind of a bummer year after playing for the City championship last spring.

Now we will be all about basketball for sixthish months.

  1. CYO kickball pitching philosophy is that you pitch slow to good kickers, fast to poor kickers. The idea is to make the good kickers provide their own power and try to overwhelm the weak kickers with speed.  ↩

Kid Sports Update

September 8, 2021 /

This has to be the latest in the school year I’ve ever gone before sharing a kid sports update. Good reason for that: we only have one kid playing any sports at the moment!

I should be writing a wrap-up of L’s kickball regular season. Her final game was supposed to be yesterday.

“So,” attentive readers may be wondering, “does that mean her team is going back to the City playoffs?!?!”

Sadly it does not mean that.

Part of that is because they’ve had four games rained out – one game has been rained out twice – and still have three games to make up.

But it also means they are sitting at 2–2 through four games and any chance to return to the City championship game is out the window.

It’s been a weird season even accounting for the rain. After being rained out twice they finally played their first game and run-ruled a poor team that seemed to have a lot of girls that had never played before.

Then they played the team, St. H, we thought would be our biggest competition. We’ve gone back-and-forth with St. H since fourth grade. Usually the team that wins goes on to win the division. There was some added drama this year because St H has a girl that spent her first seven years at St P’s but never played kickball despite being a crazy athlete.

We were up 11–5 after one-and-a-half innings…then proceeded to give up 32 unanswered runs to get run ruled in four-and-a-half innings. Naturally our former student just destroyed us, along with a few of her teammates.

After that came a sloppy, 14-run win. I say sloppy because we scored 14 in the first inning then our girls kind of played like ass.

Tuesday night we played St S, a school we’ve had had battles with back to third grade. Based on their scores we expected a very close game. We got drilled early, barely kept it under the 25-run limit, and managed to get it down to 14 runs before losing. A couple HUGE breaks went against us. The biggest was our girls forgetting how many outs there were and not doubling a runner off second to end an inning. St S added ten more runs before we could finally get that third out.

That game took 95 minutes to play, which was awful. Neither team played very good defense and the innings just went on and on and on. Thank goodness it wasn’t 95° like a week ago.

You may recall me saying last spring the City semifinal game L’s team played in was the best they’ve ever played defensively. They must have forgotten how to field over the summer because they have been brutal in the field. Some of it is being in the 7th/8th grade league where girls are bigger and can kick it farther, and there are more girls who can place the ball better to avoid the defense. But where last year it seemed like our girls made an amazing catch every inning, this year they aren’t getting to balls or are dropping them or throw to the wrong base or any of half-a-dozen other things that can keep an inning alive. I don’t think that would have made a difference in our first loss, but it definitely played a major factor in the Tuesday loss.

L is playing well, but not at the level she did last year. Through four games she’s 21 for 25 with just six home runs.[1] She was 4–7 Tuesday which is probably the most outs she’s ever made in one game. Some of her (relative) struggles are due to better defense limiting her to doubles and triples (she has four doubles and eight triples). Those outfielders get the ball back into the pitcher a lot faster than they did in the 5th/6th grade league. Some of it is because she hasn’t kicked as well as she did last year.

The biggest factor, though, is her knees are constantly bothering her. They flared up a couple times in the winter and spring, but the pain always passed in a day or two. However, since late July she has been in almost constant pain. Some days she struggles to get up-and-down the stairs in our house. She certainly can’t run as fast as she did in the spring. It has to affect her kicking, too, although she claims it doesn’t.

S insists it’s all because L has grown so fast and so much over the past six months or so. S is also confident it is just Osgood-Schlatter disease. Other than ice and ibuprofen the only real way to combat O-S is to stop being active until you stop growing. And L isn’t about to do that.

It hasn’t helped that because CYO sports scheduling is stupid she’s already started practice for her St P’s basketball team. She made the A team again, so she’s playing with the four 8th graders she played with two years ago along with two classmates. Again, because CYO is ridiculously dumb in how they schedule sports, the CYO basketball season begins in a little under three weeks.

L is also trying out for a club basketball program she wants to play for over the winter. There are a series of five tryout sessions, the first was a week ago. She and one of her St P’s classmates are trying out together. They both said the girls they scrimmaged with and against at the first session were good, but they hung right with them. L worked very hard on her game over the summer. I hope her knees calm down a little so she can show off her improvement for both teams.

  1. Which still leads the team. But she kicked six home runs in a single game last spring.  ↩

Middle School Spring Sports Wrap Up

May 14, 2021 /

After six weeks of action, we are done with spring sports. At least at the middle school level.

We had a little scare before the week’s events began. L had knee issues last fall and winter, a combination of growing pains and Osgood-Schlatter disease. They largely went away after the winter basketball season ended and never popped up again this spring.

Until Monday, when she could barely walk.

We got her a crash physical therapy course (thanks to a pediatrician she knows well and some Googling), a heavy regimen of Ibuprofen, and a lot of Icy-Hot before activity. Tuesday she was better and it didn’t seem to affect her performance, which was a huge relief. It did make me want to puke for awhile, though.

Tuesday

L’s team played their City kickball semifinal. They faced a team from a school, St N’s, that is known for being kick ass at kickball, but we thought it was the weaker of their two teams. That got confirmed pretty quickly. St N’s kicked first, and their lead-off kicker got on base and scored. I knew their team was mostly fifth graders but this was not a good start.

Thankfully they didn’t score again for three innings as we run-ruled them 27–2 in five innings. L went 5–5 with two home runs and four runs scored. She and her teammates played their best defensive game of the year.

Wednesday

City track finals. L ran the 50, 100, and 200, and C the 100 plus a medley relay.

The good news for L was that she ran her fastest times of the year in all three races. The bad news was the defending champion in all three races ran faster. L finished second in both the 50 and 100 and fourth in the 200. We were hoping L could push the champ, but the margins were fairly comfortable.

L beat a girl from St S for second in both the 50 and 100. In the 100 they were just 0.04 apart and it took a long, long time for the judges to look at the video and post the times. After both races the girls ran to each other with big grins on their faces and slapped hands. I loved that they were pushing each other hard but their first thought after the finish was to congratulate each other

I wanted to hate the girl who won each race. She’s from Terre Haute so I made a few quiet, sarcastic comments about how L was the real City champ in the 50 and 100. But afterwards L said the girl is super nice and goofed around with them before and after races. You can’t hate a nice kid, even when they beat yours.

L racked up 16 very important points for St P’s in the team competition. A pretty solid season for a kid who had never ran track before. She’s already making plans for what she will run in high school.

C qualified sixth for the 100. In the final she started slow and struggled to keep up. Where every other finalist ran faster than Saturday’s prelims, she was a hair slower and finished 8th. She was not happy afterward. I reminded her A) she was a finalist and B) there were something like 30 other girls who would have loved to finish last in the championship heat, but instead were in the stands watching her. I don’t know if that helped in the moment but it will sink in eventually.

Fortunately she shook it off and ran a really nice second 100 in the medley relay. She got the baton with a narrow lead and passed it off with a bigger lead. I didn’t clock it but it looked like the best she ran all year.

Sadly our 400 runner was going against the girl who finished second in both the 800 and 1600. She caught and passed us quickly. There were two heats and our girls’ time was only good enough for fourth overall.

I think C was disappointed in her year. She was a 2x City finalist two years ago and blew away her competitors in the 200 leg of the medley relay. She’s aware enough to see other girls her age have gone through physical changes and run slower and/or differently than they did two years ago. But it was still frustrating for her to not be as successful as she was as a sixth grader.

I’m not sure exactly how all the team titles shake out. Team scores are posted for each age group, but not for an overall champion. I’ve seen other schools wear shirts that say City Track Champions and have all grades on them, though.

We for sure know that L and her 5th–6th grade teammates won the girls title. It was close for a good portion of the night but all their field points from Friday and two great relays allowed them to win by 20 points over the second-place squad. Along with three race ribbons, L will get a City Champs t-shirt.

The coaches said all the St P’s girls – fourth through eighth grades – combined to score more points than any other collective girls team. We don’t know if that’s an official championship or not. I think we should just claim it so that C can end her CYO career with a City Champs shirt of her own.

Thursday

Back to the diamond for the last kickball game of the year. This time we were playing the better team from St N. Ironically, this was exactly two years to the day since we lost to them for the fourth grade City championship. Our girls have all gotten bigger, but they look like sixth graders. St N had three girls that were bigger than anyone on C’s team. Seriously, one girl could have posted me up and scored at will. And probably tell me how soft I am the whole time.

We somehow got out of the first inning only down 8–3 but never got closer. They were an incredible team, catching everything, always making the right throw, and had a perfect blend of strong kickers, bunters, and aggressive base running on offense. Our girls held on as long as they could but eventually got run-ruled 36–9 in six innings. We did not help our cause by playing one of our worst defensive games of the year. That just meant we missed out on losing by slightly fewer runs in seven innings.

None of our girls were super upset. I think they realized pretty quickly that as good as they were, St N’s was at a different level.

L went 2–3. She crushed two balls. One was right at a girl who somehow held onto it for a very loud out. Another was to deep right, but St N’s made a great throw and got the ball back in just before L hit the hash mark between third and home and was sent back. She was piiiiiiiiised, which made me laugh. It was a good call although she insisted the umps missed it.[1]

The ending aside, a terrific season for our girls, finishing 8–1. Because I kept score at every game this year I was able to run some stats for L. She kicked 47–57 with 22 home runs. Pretty sure she would make first team All City if there was such a thing.

The loss made our family 0–4 in kickball City championship games. Throw in semifinals and we are 1–5. L’s team needs to arrange for a series of rainouts if they make it again and claim a split title like M’s team did in seventh grade.

Now the girls can rest a little and we can get back to not eating out 3–4 times a week because we’re constantly running around. I probably just jinxed us and M will make the travel list for three tennis meets next week.

  1. For you kickball neophytes, there are hash marks halfway between each base. If a runner is past that line when the pitcher gets control of the ball in the middle circle, they are awarded the next base. If they are short, they are sent back. Tons of umps miss this call which causes a lot of complaining, but the call was correct last night: she was one step short of getting to the line.  ↩

Kid Sports Notes

May 10, 2021 /

Track

The City track championship qualifying races were held Saturday.

L ran the 50, 100, and 200. C ran the 100 and 200.

L was a little annoyed with her assignments. Each athlete has a three event limit, and she was hoping to run a relay. Her coaches are smart, though. They know we will win the medley relay as long as we don’t drop the baton thanks to our 400 runner. So they are chasing the team points by having L run three individual sprints. When she complained I told her she had a shot to win three City championships plus the team title, so stop whining.

The Saturday heats were not organized at all. You just lined up wherever. A lot of the faster girls lined up in the first heat. But L kept hanging back. I don’t know if she wanted to see the fast girls run or if she was interested in keeping her heat winning streak alive. It worked out ok whatever her motivation was.

She won her heats in all three races. In the 50, she qualified second, 0.10 behind the top girl. In the 100 she did race a fast girl. They were neck-and-neck for the first 75 meters but L pulled away late. She was again second overall, this time 0.02 behind the fastest girl, the same girl who was first in the 50. She ran slower in the 200, but still qualified fifth, about 0.5 behind the fastest girl. In an upset the girl who is first in the 50 and 100 was only third in the 200. Apparently this girl, E, won all three sprints two years ago.

I think it was good L didn’t run against E Saturday. She knows how fast E is, but E has no idea how fast L is. From C’s experience two years ago, we know everyone runs faster in the finals. Hopefully L has enough speed Wednesday night to catch E in at least one race.

C ran poorly – for her – in the 200, and was fourth in her heat. The top eight go through to the finals and she was 20th.

She rocked her 100, though. She won her heat by two seconds and qualified sixth for the finals. She beat both a girl who had edged her in her 200 heat and one of her teammates who had beaten her three times this year. It was a great run and we were thrilled for her, although she seemed a little embarrassed by our enthusiasm.

That sets up a fun night of finals Wednesday. L has a legit shot at winning all three races. She thinks the 200 is her best chance, which made me laugh since she qualified worst for it. We had a talk Saturday night about race strategy. I told her how in the 50 and 100 she and E will have the two middle lanes, so she will always know exactly where she stands. She is excited and confident to go head-to-head with her.

C ran soooo much faster in her two City finals in sixth grade than she did in qualifying. She chopped over a second off her 200 time when she finished third. It’s unlikely she can win the 100, but I’d love to see her blow it out and improve on her qualifying place in her last individual race of middle school.

C will also run in at least one relay.

L and her classmates are set up great to win the girls 5th–6th team title. In Friday’s field events they nabbed two second and one third place finish. The mile final was run on Saturday and our distance girl won by 16 seconds. That was after throwing up three times at the start because she was so nervous. Those points put them in first by 7.5 points going into Wednesday.

Our distance girl should win the 800 and bring the medley relay team home. L’s buddy will run with her in both the 50 and 100, giving us five chances to grab points in the sprints. And we have enough sprinters left to likely place in the 4×100.

Tennis

M played across the street Wednesday for the second time in a five days. We’re not sure how that worked out, exactly, but did not complain about the easy commute. This time she and her partner got moved up to JV #1 singles, and had to play girls who normally play varsity #2 doubles. They got smoked 6–0, 6–0. But M actually played pretty well. Her serve looked decent, her opponents just returned it way faster than she sent it to them. It was a good learning experience.

She was set to play Thursday but it started pouring 20 minutes into the varsity matches and everything got cancelled.

Kickball

C played her final CYO kickball game Monday. It was on that stupid field L’s team had played on a week ago. This time they made the ground rule that kicking onto the sidewalk in left was a double instead of a triple. Which is just stupid for an 8th grade team. Our girls had their best kicking game of the year and sent ball after ball over the sidewalk. One girl hit the church on the fly. We were way ahead and when the umpire called the game after four innings instead of five, no one really cared.

We were supposed to play the first place team on Tuesday, but it rained all afternoon and we cancelled. Because of the softball tournament, track practice, and 8th grade Mother’s Day mass events, we chose not to reschedule the game and call it a season. That was our best coaching decision of the year. It meant we ended the season on a two-game winning streak and with a winning record at 3–2. First winning streak and first winning record since fifth grade, so it was a great way to wrap up this class’ kickball careers.

L’s team plays in the City semifinal tomorrow. We still don’t know who they play, as the division playoff game made it to the fifth inning Thursday and then it started raining. They are completing that game this afternoon.

L’s coaches are bringing boys in to practice against them to get ready for the the playoffs. We can kick with anybody. I worry our defense is a little too loose to keep us in a game against the beasts from the Southside, though.

Weekend Kid Sports Notes

May 3, 2021 /

The pace is winding down but still kid sports notes to share from the past few days.

Track

Yesterday was CYO track meet #3. This one was a little different: kids were free to make their own schedules. They picked a race, show up when it was called, and then scanned their wristband at the finish line to “register” themselves for that event.

L kept bouncing around on what to run. The 50 and 100? The 100 and 200? All three? She settled on the shorter sprints. Despite running into a pretty fierce headwind she dropped 0.11 off her 50 time, winning the race in 7.57, nearly 0.3 faster than the second-place runner. That wind slowed her down in the 100, but it slowed her opponents more. She beat her St P’s buddy by over 0.7 and the third place runner by a full second. Her time would also have been fast enough to win the 7th/8th grade girls race.

She was again taking names. After the 100 she was excited about beating “all the fast girls.” I’m not sure how she gets this information, since we didn’t have previous times for any of the new girls she ran against. I wonder if she asks when they are lining up, or if girls are just always bragging. I need to make sure some girls are talking smack to her before the city events!

She ran the first 100 of the medley relay, got a big lead, her buddy stretched it out in the second 100, but our 200 and 400 girls had issues with the baton pass and gave all the margin away. No worries, our 400 runner is the fastest in the state and won easily.

C had a good day, too. She decided to only run the 100. She got put in the second heat, which she won by about five yards. Her time was good enough to take third overall, 0.02 behind a teammate who ran the faster heat. I like to think C would have caught her if they ran the same heat.

She ran the second 100 of the medley relay. She got the baton in second, passed it off in second. Mission accomplished. Her team got destroyed in the anchor leg, though. Still, she had two good runs for the day.

Next Saturday are the preliminary rounds for the City championships.

Tennis

M played a match Friday right across the street from our house. Unfortunately she played at the same time L and I were at kickball and before S could get there. They actually played multiple sets this time, playing to four games rather than six. She and her partner lost two sets to none, but did win a couple games in one of the sets. She’s hoping to get to play tomorrow, assuming the rain passes by then.

She’s also asked about continuing lessons through the summer with the plan to play next year.

Soccer

You may recall that last Tuesday C scored a goal, earning her an ear cartilage piercing. That happened without either S or I there to see it.

Wednesday she played again and I was able to attend. I was sitting right at midfield. Late in the second half there was a loose ball near the goal, she pounced on it, and it looked like she made terrific contact, sending the ball towards the corner of the goal. The goalie did a full-out stretch and, from my perspective, seemed to knock the ball wide.

C started jumping up and down, shaking her arms, clearly yelling because she was upset. The St P’s parents around me and I started laughing, thinking C was pissed that this kid made a phenomenal save on her shot.

And then the referee blew her whistle and pointed at midfield, indicating it was a goal.

She had scored again!

Immediately I got the questions, “So does this mean two piercings?!?!” That night one of her coaches, who wasn’t at the game, texted me, “I hear the belly button piercing got approved.”

I texted S, who was at a meeting, with the news. “I only signed off on one piercing!”

After the game C said that the goalie did get his hands on the ball, but pushed it into the corner of the net where there was a big tear and the ball sailed through, making it look to those of use 50 yards away like it had missed. She was jumping up and down thinking the referee didn’t see it and she wouldn’t get her goal.

She was very pumped to have scored again.

Thursday she did something totally unprecedented: she skipped a kickball game for her team’s final soccer game. I wasn’t sure about this. We agreed at the beginning of the year that kickball would always come first. I’m a coach, for crying out loud! What kind of message does it send that I let my kid skip for another sport? But she’s having so much fun with soccer that I said it was fine with me if my kickball coaching partner agreed. Luckily her daughter plays soccer, too, and she saw the happiness on C’s face. She gave us her blessing.

In the finale Thursday C had a couple scoring chances that she couldn’t take advantage of. In the dying minutes of the game, she looked to have a breakaway with a kid in goal who did not want to be there. But one of her teammates came over and knocked her off the ball. As soon as he did that, the referee blew the whistle ending the game. I stood up and yelled, “Thanks a lot, Stephen!” All the parents around me thought I was thanking him for keeping C from scoring. In fact I was being sarcastic: I wanted her to score again!

Oh well, she had a ton of fun this past week, and that’s the most important thing.

Kickball

Turns out the game C and I missed was kind of a big deal. Just as the soccer game ended, I got a text from my coaching partner. “We won, 31–30, in 9 innings!”

Extra innings in kickball?!?! That happened to M’s team in 7th grade – they had a ten inning game – but that was the only time I had experienced it.

The next day I got the scoop. We were missing five players total, so had just enough for a team of 10. We were down seven going into the bottom of the 7th, with the bottom of the order up. They all got on base – which NEVER happens for those girls – then we scored seven to send it to extras. Neither team scored in the 8th, then we scored three in the bottom of the 9th to pull out the win.

Her team is supposed to play tonight and tomorrow, but we’ll see if weather allows that to happen.

L’s team played their final regular season game of the year Friday. They faced a team that was mixed 5th/6th graders and had been getting killed all year. So we were a little nervous when we were only up 5–4 after two innings.

Our girls scored 14 in the third, 13 in the fourth, and seven in the fifth to win by mercy rule.

L was not happy, though. The field we were playing on was weird. There was a sidewalk in left field that meant balls she normally kicks that way would be ground rule triples instead of home runs. She started the game trying to kick to center. That produced a double and a fly out. She started shifting her aim to right field, where the ball could roll. One of those kicks turned into a single and she was tagged out going to second, although she insists the tag didn’t touch her. She got another double. Then she came up in the top of the fifth with the bases loaded. She aimed toward right and absolutely smoked the ball. This was a no-doubter, everyone can walk because the defense isn’t getting it, kick.

And then the umpire raised his fist and called her out for stepping over the three foot kicking line. Which is bullshit; she was at least four inches short of it. Short enough to see clear asphalt between her shoe and the line.

This was her first game of the season in which she didn’t kick any home runs. She was not happy. After the game she wouldn’t talk for two hours. I told her to knock it off: they won by 32 on a day she didn’t kick well, and that was a good thing. Plus I had been warning her about getting close to the kicking line for a week and she kept blowing me off. Maybe this will make her adjust her technique.

Her team went 7–0 in the regular season. There are three divisions in her age group, and her team will play in a City semifinal next week. The division they matchup with has a three-way tie for first place, so it requires two playoff games this week to determine who we play. At track yesterday the coaches were trying to convince me to go scout the second playoff game. I didn’t say that I wouldn’t do it…

Mid-Week Kid Sports Notes

April 28, 2021 /

I mentioned that this would be a very busy kid sports week. That has proven to be true. As there were a couple big developments, I’m going to go ahead and get you caught up on what’s gone down the past two days.

Tennis

Monday M played her second tennis match. We never heard why, but they mixed up the partners and she played with one of her best friends. Just like her first match, she and her partner raced out to a 3–1 lead, then lost the fifth game. This time they held it together and won their one-set match 8–3. She and her partner – who lost 8–0 a week ago – were pretty pumped to get the win. It was extra fun since both S and I were able to watch her play.

Now I’m not going to blow any smoke up your collective asses and claim this was a high quality match. A lot of balls into the net or hit way long or wildly out-of-bounds. There were a few service games that were lost at love. But there were also a handful of decent rallies and M and her partner both had several decent winners.

I told M after she got home that my only piece of advice was to swing more confidently. She has a tendency to hit cautiously, with a weak arm, which sends the ball into the net (sometimes bouncing its way there). She rolled her eyes at me, but I reminded her that she’s had six months of lessons; she knows how to swing a racquet.

“I’m not saying you have to try to kill the ball,” I said. “I’m just saying you’ve had good lessons and you’ve worked hard. Take a confident swing each time and I guarantee you’ll have better results.”

In her defense, most of the JV girls have the exact same issue.

I was proud that after hitting several balls into the net, she looked like she wanted to throw her racquet. That is definitely a trait she picked up from me! Although I would have 100% tossed my racquet.

The weirdest thing about the match was it was my first trip to the CHS campus since November 13 when the school went virtual for the end of the fall semester. Crazy, huh?

Soccer

C had a soccer game last night. As it was both across the street from S’s office and L had a kickball game, she got a ride to the game with a friend knowing S could come over, watch the end, and bring her home.

We were a couple innings into kickball and I was standing in my normal scorekeeper’s spot behind third base. Suddenly my phone and watch started vibrating like crazy as a bunch of texts came in. I glanced to make sure the messages weren’t from M telling me the house was on fire, but after confirming they weren’t from M didn’t read any of them.

Between innings I unlocked my phone and reviewed what had come in.

“C just scored!”
“Are you at the game? She just scored!”
“OMG, C just scored a goal!”
“U owe a piercing!!!!”
“Guess who is getting her ears pierced???”

Alert readers may recall that at the beginning of the season S promised C that if she scored a goal this year, she could get her ear cartilage pierced. She had a chance two weeks ago but put the ball over the crossbar. Apparently she did not waste her second opportunity.

This was at the beginning of a defensive inning for L’s team, and she was playing third base. When she reached her spot I yelled out to her, “C scored a goal!” L’s eyes widened and she got a huge grin on her face, “Really?! WOW!!!”

When the game was over, a 3–1 win, C texted me:

“I scored a goal. Dubs.”

When she got home she broke down the play for me. It came on a throw-in deep in the offensive end of the field. The ball bounced through the defense, hit her arm, dropped directly in front of her, and she calmly put it away. I doubt there was anything calm about it but it sounds better that way. I didn’t point out that if the ref had been paying attention it should have been a handball since the ball hit her arm. He didn’t see it so the goal was 100% valid. I guess it was the same referee who screwed up the snow game last week, so he owed us one.

My kickball coaching partner texted me after the game that all the St P’s parents went nuts when the ball hit the back of the net.

I wish I could have seen it, but I’m very glad she was able to score. C has a tendency to let sports disappointments drag her mood down. This was a fine way to begin to close out her CYO sports career.

She has another game tonight – it will likely be her final game – so I’ve encouraged her to not be satisfied with one goal.

Oh, and it was sunny, breezy, and 84. A HUGE difference from last Tuesday night.

Kickball

A ho-hum night for L in kickball.

She kicked seven times.
She reached base safely seven times.
She kicked one double.
The other six kicks were all home runs, including one grand slam.

I’m honestly not sure what got into her: this was the hardest she’s ever kicked the ball. She had three home runs in the first two innings and each sailed over the deepest outfielder’s head. She could have walked in from second and still reached home safely.

The one time she kicked a double it was because the defense tried to get tricky. The opposing coach was one of her basketball coaches last winter. He was talking to me while he was trying to stack his left field with an extra defender and get them to back up. He got everyone situated how he wanted then looked at L and muttered to me, “Oh jeez, she’s going to kick it to right field, isn’t she?” Sure enough, L was angling her body to kick to right. She didn’t get 100% of this ball and sent it directly at the right fielder. As in youth baseball/softball, you usually hide your weakest fielder in right field in kickball. This girl wanted nothing to do with L’s line drive. I think she may have even closed her eyes. But she hung in there, the ball ricocheted off her legs back toward the infield, and L had to be content stopping at second.

Weekend Kids Sports Notes

April 26, 2021 /

We are about to embark on our busiest week of the spring sports season: three tennis matches, four kickball games, one soccer game (two games missed because of kickball), and trying to squeeze in at least one track practice per girl before next weekend’s meet.

Here’s how they did last week.

Tennis

No tennis matches for M last week. She gets to play today in the first JV home meet of the year. Only 22 JV girls were selected (out of 40–50ish, we’re not sure how many girls have dropped since the initial rosters came out) and she and her partner made the list based on their play in practice. She’s pretty pumped. She has two whole-squad meets later this week.

Kickball

Last Monday L’s team played St B’s, their biggest rival within their division. Her team won a terrific game by six runs. The teams were very evenly matched. Both teams had 13-run innings on offense. Both teams had defensive innings where they gave up no runs. Our girls were a smidge better on defense and had only one bad inning kicking, and that was the difference. We went into the 7th up seven and only gave up one run, so didn’t have to kick in the bottom of the inning. It was the first time L’s class has beaten St. B’s in four tries, so there was a trip to Dairy Queen after the game.

L went 4–6 with two homers, including a grand slam.

Friday they run-ruled some girls 51–19. It should have been a five-inning game but we played awful defense in the bottom of the fifth and gave up just enough runs that we had to play one more inning. After the game I accused L of booting one ball on purpose so she could kick again. She didn’t deny it.

Her line for the night: 7–7 with two home runs and four triples. The other team could not catch but they were at least good enough to hold her to triples more often than not.

L’s squad has three games this week. Assuming they don’t lose two – and that seems highly unlikely – they will be division champs and advance to the City semifinals next week.

C’s team played their only game of the week Thursday. We were facing a team that was mostly seventh graders. We gave up 12 runs in the top of the first, scored none in the bottom, and our girls all mentally checked out. We lost 35–7 in five innings and I’m honestly not sure how we scored seven. Those seventh graders could all either blast the ball or place bunts perfectly and beat them out. Our girls couldn’t catch a thing, and acted only mildly interested in making plays on the bases. It was borderline embarrassing.

I don’t think we had a chance to beat those girls – in addition to kicking the crap out of the ball they caught anything in the air and always made the right play when throwing to bases – but it would have been nice if we competed. This was a clear indictment of our coaches (mostly the idiot third base coach).

Track

Track meet number two was yesterday. Another great day to run. Another day that L dominated.

It was a smaller meet so runners were only able to compete in two individual events.

L ran the 100 and 200, winning both. She beat her buddy in the 100 by 0.3. She won the 200 by over a second. She was pumped about that win because a girl was bragging in the lineup for the race about how fast she ran last week. L beat that girl by two full seconds. She knew her name, and the first thing she did when we got the final results was find the gap between their times. I like how she listens to other girls talk smack and then quietly goes out and beats them.

Her times were also fast enough to win both the 7th/8th grade girls races and the boys 5th/6th grade races.

I must say the times yesterday have an asterisk. The automatic timers were down most of the day, so most sprints were hand timed, which means the don’t count as PRs and you can’t really compare them across races.

C was supposed to run the 100 and 200 as well. She was struggling with some hip pain, though. In the 200 she was in good shape until the final 50 when you could see that pain really started to bother her. She faded to finish last in her heat and 9th overall. She was in tears afterward so S gave her some Motrin and she begged out of the 100, hoping she would be ready for the relay.

In the relays L ran in both the 4×100 and the medley. Her team smoked the 4×100, winning easily with her as the anchor.

The 7th/8th and 5th/6th medley relays were run together since neither age group had enough to fill all the lanes. That meant C and L would run the 200 legs in lanes next to each other. C was feeling better and laughing and bouncing around by the time the race began. There was a buzz among the St P’s parents when they saw our girls walking to turn three together. L has developed a little bit of a following the last two weeks, and the older parents remember how well C ran two years ago. Folks were watching S and I to see who we were pulling for.

The older girls had a decent lead when C got the baton. She took off and L waited and waited. When she finally got the stick C was 10–15 meters ahead. From our vantage point near the finish line we could see L closing, but couldn’t tell what the gap was when they exited turn four. They seemed awfully close, though. But then L drifted into C’s lane for several steps, realized her mistake, lost her rhythm, and jumped back in her proper lane. She never really got that rhythm back and handed off in second place. Her anchor quickly took the lead and the younger girls won the race.

In the city meet L’s team would have been disqualified, but in this one they still got the win. She said she looked up and saw two purple girls next to each other in the passing zone and got confused. Might have been ideal not to line the St P’s teams up in neighboring lanes, but that would have taken away the fun of the B girls running next to each other. Plus L learned a lesson in a race that doesn’t matter.

I think it was good for C to get the leg win over L. She’s been L’s biggest fan the past two weeks. It’s been fun to watch her find L after a race with a big grin on her face to congratulate her. After one race last week we could see her saying, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t know you were that fast!” But I know it bothers her some that her “little” sister – they are basically the same height now – is having success while she struggles (relatively speaking). I keep telling her the only reason she’s having a hard time is because she doesn’t have time to practice between kickball, soccer, and bad weather. I wish she would have two weeks to get a bunch of practices in before City, but this week is pretty much shot with other games. Hopefully we can get her stretched out and loosened up enough that she can run well in her relay(s) at City.

How did S and I react while C and L were racing each other? We took turns cheering for both. “Come on, C! Come on, L! Come on, B girls!” is what I said. S shouted “Faster, L, catch her! Faster, C, don’t let her catch you!” Good, clean family fun!

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