Tag: kickball (Page 3 of 6)

Mo’ Kid Sports

September 18, 2018 / DB

Our kickball seasons came to an official end last night. A season that began with back-to-back rainouts at the same school ended with back-to-back make-up games at that school in 90-degree heat. Not the best bookends.

C’s season wrapped up Friday in pretty glorious fashion. Every girl was locked in and they cruised to a 44–5, run-ruled win. If we had played like that the previous Monday, we just might have had a chance against the team that won our division. C closed the year with a big home run. The head coach’s husband was taking pictures and got a great one of C just after contact, her right foot up in the air, her left several inches off the ground, the ball just about out of the frame as it rocketed to the outfield.

M’s season ended on the same field last night with a doubleheader make up of two rained out games. We began the first game up 9–1, as the season-opener was stopped just as we were ending the first inning. For three weeks our girls had that inning to think about. I’m pretty sure they all expected the day to be two easy wins. And, unfortunately, they played two rather disinterested games. Oh, and it turned out their opponents were pretty good. Despite that 9–1 lead, we dropped the first game 27–20. In the second game, we trailed by three in the last inning but scraped across four runs with two outs to take a lead. Our defense, normally the bright spot on this team, had been suspect all day. And we kicked the ball around the infield long enough to let the tying and winning runs in.

Yep, a team that had lost six regular season games in nine seasons coming in got swept in a doubleheader and finished the year with three losses. Not exactly the way we wanted these girls to end their kickball careers.

After the game M was a little teary. Likely more because she jammed a finger in the last inning than because she was emotional about her kickball days being done. I reminded her how when she was in third grade, she said she absolutely did not want to play in the spring.[1] We told her that she had to at least give it a try. She not only played that spring, but was super excited to play in the fall of her fourth grade year. And never stopped after. I also reminded her that in ten seasons, she had a ton of great memories she would hang on to for years. I don’t know if that helped her, but it made me feel better.

Our weekend was full of sports, too.

L finally got on the soccer field, errrr, pitch with games both Saturday and Sunday. They were two very different experiences.

The league L is in partners with a couple neighboring leagues to make sure we have enough teams at the U12-U16 levels. And our first opponent was a true club team. These girls had been playing together for several years and were, the head coach and I were guessing, the product of a tryout process rather than a blind, random generation of kids like our roster was. We hung in for the first 10 minutes or so, but it got real ugly after that. We lost something like 10–1. We gave up two penalty kicks because of handballs in the box. We probably should have given up two more but our ref didn’t seem super interested in calling anything that wasn’t blatantly obvious.

It didn’t help that our opponents were huge compared to ours. They all had to be early 2007 birthdays, and were tall and thick, where our team was full of late 2008 girls who are either short or have cross country bodies. It really looked like we were in the wrong league, both in terms of talent and size. Oh, and we were missing four girls, so we had zero subs. And one of our players took a shot in the nose and had to sit out for several minutes until it stopped bleeding.

For the first time since she started playing, L looked totally outclassed. It took her a long time to figure out how to get and keep possession. And then she would dribble into the teeth of the defense and get surrounded by three girls who were all 5’4” and thick. She did set up our only goal by taking a ball deep down the side and crossing it. But for the most part she was humbled.

Sunday we played a team that looked only slightly smaller than Saturday’s opponents. Again it was a very even first 10–15 minutes until they broke through with a couple goals. We pulled one back when L made a good run, got completely wiped out inside the box, everyone stopped waiting for a whistle that never came, and one of our other girls pounced on the loose ball and put it in.

The second half was another story. I don’t know what happened, because we mostly let the girls sit and hydrate to recover from the heat at halftime, but we absolutely dominated the first 15 minutes of the second half. The head coach and I got all over L for giving up on a ball right in front of us because a bigger defender was chasing it down, too. She got pissed, charged down the field and stole the ball back. Moments later, she pulled a Roberto Baggio, collecting a ball deep in the defensive end and dribbling straight up the field before ripping one by the goalie. Really, these goals should not happen at this level. I think the defense was just tired. Their goalie then scored on herself and we were tied.[2]

L got another goal to put us ahead, and missed two dead easy chances that literally made me fall over in disbelief. She looked like she belonged Sunday. We got a fifth goal late when their goalie gifted us another and we got out with a 5–3 win. The mood of the girls was like 1000% better than Saturday, shockingly. One girl, Saturday, kept saying, “What’s the point? Why are we even trying?” I was going to start calling her Lucy from the Peanuts because of her attitude. After Sunday’s game she had a big grin on her face and I asked her, “Isn’t it better when you don’t give up hope and keep playing?”

Because of other sports, I hadn’t been able to be around the entire team until this weekend. I’m not sure how good we’ll be, since we’re so young and small, but I really like a bunch of the girls. We have a few who are super athletic and a little stubborn, and refuse to give up if a bigger girl takes the ball away. We have three girls who work really well with L, and they could become difficult to stop once they learn how to play together. One of those girls can slide all over the field and cover any position while making fantastic passes to her teammates. And a bunch of them have fun personalities. We have one girl who complains a lot. At halftime she was complaining about how hot it was and how she hated running. Our smallest girl, who is this tiny thing with glasses and braces but is also really good, said in her little voice, “Don’t you run track, though?” Not everyone heard it but I busted out laughing, “Dang, O! You just roasted her!” and the whole team lost it. O sat there with a proud, sheepish grin on her face.

C also ran Saturday afternoon. We kind of hate this race because A) it’s huge; I think every school in the area is invited and B) it is always in the afternoon so the runners at the high school that hosts can run in their meet in the morning. So we’re always out in the open and it is usually hot. Saturday was just nasty hot and humid.

Except for the elite runners, who cruised to wins, everyone was having a really hard time. In C’s race, all St. P’s runners were on the verge of tears and barely able to stand at the end. She finished 18th with about the same time she ran last year. S and I had to walk with her, helping her along, until we could get her to shade after she finished. She was the fourth St. P’s runner and the third in her grade. Now that kickball is done I’m hoping a little extra training will push her up a few spots in the next few meets.

Back then third graders could not play until the spring season, and then only on mixed teams with fourth graders. ↩
Speaking of things that shouldn’t happen at this level, goalies should not kick the ball backwards over their heads into their own goals. ↩

Kid Sports

September 11, 2018 / DB

Once again, that bitch Mother Nature has been playing havoc with our family sports schedule. I’ve lost track of how many practices, games, and other events have been wiped out over the past month. Seriously, it didn’t rain here for like six weeks, then, as soon as fall practices started, we began getting multiple downpours each week right around the time a kid was supposed to be doing something.

Here’s where we stand now.

M’s kickball team will not defend their City championship. They won their first two games – another game was stopped after one inning because of rain with them up 9–1 – before they ran into a buzzsaw. We had heard St L had been practicing four nights a week to come after our girls. We weren’t super concerned at first, because we had never had trouble with them. But we also heard they had a bunch of soccer players that had not played since fifth grade that were coming back for one final run at City.

And, damn, those chicks were good.

We were up by five or six runs after two innings but then got blasted. We narrowly avoided getting run-ruled after six innings and scored enough in the 7th to only lost by 16. It really wasn’t that close, though. We’ve never played a team that could kick like St L’s. Every girl through their entire lineup could absolutely blast the ball. Even their tiny girls who looked more like 6th graders could boot it. Our lineup is good, but also has several holes in it and we just couldn’t keep up.

That was a bit of a bummer, but I thought it was a good sign that all our girls recognized they got beat by a better team and came to terms with the loss pretty quickly. My memory might be a little off, but I believe this was only the sixth regular season loss these girls have had in nine seasons of kickball. And only their fourth regular season loss when playing against same-aged girls. Pretty impressive.

A night later we had an exciting one-run win over another one of our big rivals. I missed this game running the other two sisters around.

M’s team has a double header on the schedule for next Monday. Those will, likely, be the last two games this group ever plays together.

C’s team won their first three games and had their biggest game of the year Monday night against St. S, a long-time nemesis for her class. They were undefeated too, but where we were scoring between 20–30 runs a game, St. S had scored over 50 runs in all five of their games. Before we started, I joked with our coach that if we could just hold them to 30 and kick well ourselves, we had a chance.

Things got off to a bad start when three of our girls went to St. S instead of our field. Two of them caught their error quick and arrived before the game started, but the third girl rolled in in the second inning.

We somehow held them scoreless in the first, scored three in our half, and were up 5–2 after two. Then came the proverbial “bad inning”: we gave up 12 runs, eight after getting two outs. We dropped two balls in the outfield, bobbled a bunch of balls in the infield, and were on the wrong side of a close call at first.

We never got back in it and lost by 15. So no City for C’s team. She’s had a steady, if unspectacular season. Girls don’t kick it to the suicide spot as much as they did when they were younger, so she’s made a lot fewer plays than she did a year ago. But she still generally makes them when the ball is kicked her way. And I always laugh when another team tries to run on her and she races some girl down from 50 feet away. Her kicking has been hot-and-cold, like always. She has a few home runs. She’s also booted some deep balls that have been caught. Such is life in sixth grade. She has scored from first on kicks to shallow center a couple times. Once she almost ran down a teammate who was a base ahead of her when they were both coming home. She was giggling the whole time.

St. P’s will send at least one team to City this season. Our 7th graders are undefeated and two games ahead of everyone with one to play. And L’s classmates are still undefeated, although they have two tough games this week against teams that each have one loss. I’ve been giving L grief all season about “What if they go to City without you?” She always looks like she’s filled with mixed emotions when I ask.

Cross country has suffered from the weather, too. The first meet of the year was cancelled Labor Day weekend because of heavy thunderstorms. While S and I were in New York, C ran and finished in 10th place. It was her fourth fastest time ever, which was pretty good considering she’s barely practiced because of kickball and the weather. A friend sent a picture of her just after she finished and she looked like she was going to throw up. Then last week’s meet was wiped out because of heavy rains. I’m kind of anxious for kickball to get wrapped up so she can have a couple weeks of good training before the City meet in early October.

And L’s soccer season has yet to begin. She was supposed to play two games the weekend before Labor Day, but as all teams had just started practicing that week, both were postponed until October. Then last week the fields were flooded. So this Saturday will be her first game of the year. I’m counting on tornadoes or a blizzard or some other crazy weather to keep them from playing.

Fall Sports Kick Off

August 20, 2018 / DB

Opening day of fall sports, which is always both exciting and stress inducing. I have to admit, it is nice only having to worry about two kickball schedules this season. And somehow we lucked out and have no nights with two games. We do have three different stretches with three games in three nights, so we’ll still be busy. Only having two kickballers does not mean we’re not busy, though.

M’s team begins defense of their spring city title tonight. We’ve heard two of the teams on our schedule have been practicing four nights a week to get prepped for us. Our girls first and only practice will be the 30 minute warm-up before tonight’s game. Cocky? No, just too many schedules to manage. Plus the head coach said, “We won our title, I’m going to give them a break.” Oh, and they only practiced once last season, and that was before their playoff game. In fact, I think they’ve had a combined four practices over the past three seasons. This is standard for these girls.

C’s team has games Tuesday and Wednesday. This is a big year for them, playing in the top division of the 5th/6th grade group. It’s also the first time this class has played together as a true A team. This team drives me a little crazy as they have the potential to be really, really good but there’s something about C’s class that doesn’t quite work. There are good players who cry if something small goes wrong. Another good player who, once her meds wear off, will literally stand in the field and stare at people on the sidelines until you yell at her to pay attention. C doesn’t have either of these problems; she’s tough as nails and always locked in. She will cry after she’s been hit by a rocket in the face for the third time, but also refuse to come out of the game. However, she’s not the alpha like the girl who has lead M’s team since fourth grade. She’ll lead by example but not crack the whip and get everyone in line. I think this team needs that alpha to maximize their potential.

C is still running, too. Officially she has three cross country practices per week, but with kickball she’s generally running just once. Her first meet is this weekend, the annual relay that kicks off the CYO season. That will be a good start as between weather and kickball, she hasn’t run in almost two weeks.

L’s soccer team begins practice tomorrow. Some weeks they will practice twice, but for the next few weeks I think it will just be one night. With the crazy CYO sports calendar – short seasons, girls basketball in the fall – she actually had her tryouts for basketball yesterday.

We do have another addition to the family activity schedule: M has decided to cheer. Well, I should say the alpha in M’s class decided to cheer and drug along about half of the class. M told us this last spring and we kind of laughed, rolled our eyes, and thought, “Yeah, we’ll see.” Then when sign ups rolled around, sure as shit, that group still wanted to cheer.

There was much eye rolling amongst the parents of the group about this. None of these girls have cheered before, and we believe most of them have no interest in doing it in high school. It’s just another activity to do together in their final year at St. P’s. Several parents expressed disgust at the idea of hanging out at cold football games in October to watch their girls cheer. Another, who coaches other sports, said it was a complete waste of time. And these were moms complaining, which cracked me up.

I’ve come around to the idea. M was excited about it, she’s with her best friends, and it gives her something that is hers. We know it’s tough for her to be the older sister to two siblings that are known through the school for their athletic achievements. I’m glad she is having fun and just hope she doesn’t get dropped on her head or something.

Camps and Sports

July 24, 2018 / DB

It is another camp week for us, which means the house is a little quieter. M is spending her week at CYO camp an hour south. We dropped her off Sunday. Although we drove through rain on the way there, we did not have to walk through a deluge to get to her cabin as we did with C in June. M is very excited to be back for her third year there. Five classmates are in her cabin with her. Looks like it will actually be reasonably warm rather than scorching hot while she’s down there, which is a bonus.

Last week L went to soccer camp at Cathedral, her future high school. She was a little nervous about going as no friends were signed up. The camp is for grades 4–9, too, which meant she would be in the youngest group there. When we walked up on Monday morning all we saw were girls that were much bigger than her. I noticed a worried look on her face. I found a coach, introduced myself, and checked to make sure we were in the right spot. “Yeah, you are. Those girls over there are the high school team. They’re here to help.” Thank goodness, because while I have great confidence in L’s game, I had a hard time seeing her playing against 16 year olds.

Still, when I left, I had a strange feeling. She usually jumps right into things but she had a sense of reserve about her. She’s become a bit of a worrier over the past year or so, and something about her demeanor made me start considering her having a bad experience.

The camp was only 2 ½ hours each morning. When I rolled in to pick her up, there was a part of me that wondered if she would be upset about how the morning went, maybe even ask not to go back the next day. But, as I drove up to the fields, I saw her shooting and scoring in drills and figured everything was fine.

She ended up having a great week. The only bummer was her age group only had three other girls in it. The good side of that was she got a lot of reps and attention. One day I saw the head coach’s wife hanging out with her for a few minutes after practice. They were making short kicks to each other, back-and-forth. When she got in the car I asked L what that was about. She said, “She’s trying to get me not to cross my right leg over my left when I kick.” Private instructions from the coach’s wife, nice!

She did say that the other girls in her group were not very good. She had a great time playing with the high school girls, though. We have a couple daughters of friends on the team. One day one of them came over to say hello after practice. I know she was being nice, but she said, “Man, L is a soccer rock star! My head coach even came over and asked who she was and if she was going to play at Cathedral one day!” That made L smile.

They passed out their camp t-shirts on Friday. She did not take it off until we made her on Sunday night.

This is also my busy kickball week. Sign ups ended Sunday so I have to put teams together, get coaches in the system, make sure we have enough uniforms, etc. I’m also toying with the idea of changing how we divide up one group of girls. I’m sure that’s going to piss some folks off, which is always fun.

Our family controversy is that L decided not to play this season. She claims it is because she’s moving up to U12 soccer, that’s going to be harder, blah blah blah. Yeah, U12 is going to be a little tougher. But she’s always done just fine when she’s been a young kid on a team. And the time investment isn’t any different; she’ll still have one practice and game each week. I know that something else is bugging her about kickball, but I can’t figure out what it is. She seemed to enjoy it last year, although she did tell me then she wasn’t going to play this year. I asked her at least 50 times over the past week if she was sure. When we dropped off M at camp, two of the moms who coach L’s grade started chanting at her from the next cabin, “PLAY KICKBALL! PLAY KICKBALL!” Sucks for her teammates because she’s the best player on the team. But I will not force her to play. I’m hoping she does what C did with volleyball when she skipped last year and then, after watching some classmates play, immediately said she’s playing this year. Sunday night L backed off a little and said she’ll play in the spring. My response wasn’t, “That’s great,” or “Awesome!” or “Thanks.” No, I said, “YOU PLAY SOCCER IN THE SPRING, TOO! HOW IS THAT ANY DIFFERENT?!?!?”

Oh well.

M and C are both playing. M’s team will try to defend their (co) City championship in their last season together. C will be on the 6th grade A team and we hope finally putting the best players in that class on one team will get them a division championship.

Finally!

May 25, 2018 / DB

M’s kickball career has gone like this over the past three years:

Fifth grade, advanced to the City semifinals and lost by 5 or 6 runs. They would not have beaten the team that was waiting in the City finals but it was still disappointing.

Fall of sixth grade, went undefeated in the regular season and lost in the City championship game 26–1 in four innings. Blech.

Spring of sixth grade, went undefeated in the regular season and lost in the City championship game by 9 runs after having a one-run lead going into the 7th. This one hurt; they were the better team and had one bad inning in the field and plate at the worst time.

One of the dads in our class dubbed the team “the best team to never win a City championship.” They were the Buffalo Bills of Indianapolis kickball, I guess.

Time to retire that nickname, our girls are finally City Champions!

Well, co-champions.

It was a weird season with an appropriately weird ending.

The season began with the absolutely most bonkers game I’ve ever been a part of. I could literally write 5000 words about what happened that day but I’ll boil it down to bullet points:
* Playing a team of all 8th graders we had a lead the entire game but went into our last kicks tied and couldn’t score. The first extra inning game I’d ever been a part of.
* Neither team scored in the 8th.
* In the 9th it looked like we had won the game. But the umpire called our runner, who had appeared to have scored the winning run, out for interfering with a defensive player when they ran into each other at home. Never mind that our girl A) tried to avoid the defender, B) the defender ran into the baseline and our runner’s way, and C) our girl touched home before there was contact. There was some arguing about the call but we played on. One of the opposing players called our runner involved in that play a “bitch” loud enough for everyone on the field to hear. Nice.
* We entered the bottom of the 10th down five runs. We scored two and had two on, two outs and kicked a ball to the shortstop who tried to get a force out at second. The umpire called our runner safe, but then ruled her out for coming off the bag. Game over. I started arguing that the second baseman never tagged our runner. Umpire said it was a force out. I said, rather forcefully, no it wasn’t; once the ump called her safe our runner had the right to go to third, so the defender needed to tag our runner. Our coach banished me to the sidelines, because my tone was not helping. She proceeded to argue the call for nearly 10 minutes. Finally the opposing coach came over and said, “I think she’s right, that wasn’t a force out.” The umpire insisted she made the right call, but since the opposing coach was fine with it, she reversed her call and brought the teams back out. There was much protesting from the opposing team’s parents. But, still, we were down three with two outs. We got two in and then our best kicker won the game with a three-run homer, M was officially the winning run as she broke the tie when she crossed home. Parents from both sides were yelling at the umpire and each other, the opposing girls were yelling at our girls and each other, their coach and his daughter were screaming at each other. It was really the craziest thing ever.

Whew. We got through the rest of the regular season without a loss until our final game, when we had a rematch with that team. This time we lost by three in a game that was relatively drama-free. They had a game rained out against a pretty good team and were not going to play it. Our coach insisted they play it before we play a one-game tiebreaker. They made up the game, won by three, but then our rematch was delayed a week because their 8th graders were on their DC trip.

Monday we were supposed to play the tie-breaker and immediately after the winner would play the other division champ for the City title. Naturally the only rain we’ve gotten all month was a severe thunderstorm right before the game. We postponed to Tuesday, but now the other division champ had graduation that night and class trip the next night. Whoever won on Tuesday would have to try to find a date for the championship game.

Tuesday our girls, for the third time, got an early lead. They were up 16–6 after five but I was nervous because they had blown leads in the first two games. Our girls played fantastic defense the last two innings which helped us weather two poor kicking innings, and earned a 16–10 win. The girls were all pumped up. I think many of them expected to lose. We have a player who is a great athlete but was new to kickball last year, and has always struggled to kick. She took a ball home last week, watched videos online, and kicked two home runs on Tuesday. She was so excited. That was extra cool. She made a huge difference as we were missing one of our best players because of a back injury.[1]

Now to schedule the championship game. We tried a number of options, but nothing was going to work. We had graduation Thursday, and although our team is all 7th graders, one coach and three players had to be at the ceremony. Today and all of next week both teams would be missing several players. After much discussion the coaches decided to share the championship rather than force one/both teams to play without their entire rosters. This was a good move for us, because we would not have beaten that team.

We decided all of this on Wednesday, the day of M’s class retreat. The coaches and I were both helping transport the kids at the end of the day, so we made plans to bring the girls together after they returned to the school building to update them.

The coach gathered them all in the lobby and explained how there was no good way to play the championship game. “So, we’re not going to play it. You’re City champs!” They looked at each other for a moment, then it hit and they all started screaming and jumping on each other. Later we heard that students down both halls of the building could hear them and wondered what was going on.

We got the girls ice cream and they were able to hang out in the lobby and celebrate together for the last half hour of the school day.

Sure, there’s an asterisk next to this championship. But I think they absolutely earned their share by beating a team full of huge 8th graders two out of three times. I think several of the girls went into the playoff game thinking they didn’t have a chance, or wanting to lose so they could avoid their nemesis St. B’s in the title game. But that was their best, most complete game of the year. Unlike other times when they’ve played in City and they make a mistake or two in the field and then crumble, the girls steadied themselves and kept misplays from turning into five-run rallies.

And now comes the fun part: ordering City champs shirts for the girls and updating our kickball banner in the gym to reflect another title.

Our opponents were missing two girls, which really hurt their defense. But it’s worth noting the night they beat us, we were missing two of our best players. Spring sports schedules are a bitch. ↩

Kids and Whatnot

May 8, 2018 / DB

We are in the midst of our two busiest weeks of the spring.

Last week the family had a combined eight kickball games in four nights. We swept all eight of them, the closest game being the first of the week. L’s team, which played without five players because of injury/illness/conflicts, came from 10 down to win by one. Most of the rest of the games were comfortable, with a couple run-ruled wins in there.

Last night we had a kickball and soccer practice and tonight begin a run of five games in four nights.

M’s team is in the best shape. They are undefeated and lead their division by a game. They play the second-place team, who they beat by one run in 10 innings a few weeks back, on Wednesday. Win that and the go to the City finals for the fifth time. Lose and they will have to play a single-game playoff to determine the division winner.

L’s team has just one loss, but that was to the first-place team by 30+ runs. They play again on Thursday, but I’m not real confident we can manage a 30-run swing to force a playoff game. C’s team has a couple losses, but have mostly played against teams filled with older girls. Spring of fifth grade is often about toughening the girls up for the fall, when they will play on A teams.

I have a few good kickball stories I’m going to save for next week. We will dive into the 10-inning game M had in great detail.

L’s soccer team is undefeated as well. We made sure we got the prodigy who played for us last fall to sign up again. We figure he will always out-score opponents on his own, so as long as he doesn’t have a conflict with one of the other two teams he plays for, we’re good. They did have to play without him in one of their games last weekend and L picked up the slack, creating shots for her teammates and putting in enough of her own to ensure the win. She’s averaging 5–6 goals a game, but that number is padded by a game when she scored 10. The poor team we were playing that day just was not very good and even pulling our kids back and telling them to work on passing wasn’t enough to slow down our goal scorers.

I mentioned we had a few projects that were keeping me busy during the days. One of them involved getting a new car. We still had six or seven months left on the lease on the Suburban I had been driving for almost three years. We were ridiculously past the miles limit already, so just planned on buying it when the lease ran out.

Our salesman called me a few weeks back to check on our plans. When I told him we would probably purchase it, he said, “Come in and see me. We’ll work something out.”

Ominous words coming from a car salesman!

I went in and a couple days later ended up dropping off the Suburban and driving away in a much nicer Tahoe. I’m still not really sure I understand how this works for them, but they bought us out of our lease with zero penalties or fees. Granted, they put us in a new lease for another 39 months and have a Suburban in very good cosmetic shape with decent miles on their used car lot. But, still, seems like we got the better of the deal.

The Tahoe is much nicer than the Suburban, which is cool. Power everything, leather, etc. where the Suburban was the lowest tier of trim. We lost a seat in the process – the middle row has captain seats instead of a bench seat – but the girls like not being on top of each other. One less kid we can haul to games or practices, though. The big thing is the loss of all that cargo space Suburbans have. That was vital to our lake weekends, so we’re really going to have to rethink how we pack when we head south.

That was good, clean, unexpected fun!

S and I went to her cousin’s wedding Saturday. It was nice and fun. We were all well-behaved, so no good stories to share.

M and I were supposed to head south today for her seventh grade retreat which is always held at the CYO camp down near our lake house. There was a scheduling snafu with busses, parents were asked to transport kids, but only a few of us volunteered, thus the trip got cancelled. M’s class has had a rough few weeks; there have been some broad behavior issues and the entire grade had their school-issued laptops taken from them. When she learned their retreat had been cancelled, she sighed and said, “They all hate us…” Meaning the teachers and administrators. So dramatic. I was cool with not having to get up at 6:00 this morning and spend the day with moody teens. Plus I’m headed to the lake Thursday to take care of some projects down there.

The girls are down to 13 days of school before summer vacation. They are beginning to think ahead about what they’d like to do over break. We already have a number of camps scheduled. We’re going to join the local water park. No trips this year, or at least none that involve traveling out of state. At dinner last night we were throwing out ideas for the days when we don’t have something scheduled. It’s going to get here quick.

More Kid Sports

September 19, 2017 / DB

Kickball is done.

As you should recall from last week, L’s team had to finish a game that was mysteriously cut short by their opponents, then play that team again in a full game. Sweep the game and they would go onto the City championship. A split meant a tie-breaker playoff game to settle matters.

In the suspended game Friday, we got a run in our half of the sixth to push our lead to 13, then got out of the bottom of the inning unscathed to secure the first win. That was the highlight of the day, though. We got absolutely trounced in the full game. It was 20–1 after two innings. We righted things a bit to keep from getting run-ruled, but still lost 40–17. We couldn’t kick, our defense was atrocious, and our girls just weren’t into the game at all.

Last night was the playoff game. I was really wound up on Friday but was pretty chill last night. I figured the second game was probably more true-to-form than the first, so was just hoping we could keep it close. We had a 5–3 lead in the second, and two outs on defense, before we made a couple misplays and suddenly were down 8–5. That was pretty much the game. We left the bases loaded without getting any runs the next two innings. In the fourth we gave up six runs with two outs. It was 14–5 going into the sixth. We got two runs but ended the game with a force out at home.

Here’s the thing, though: this was almost definitely our girls best game of the year. We had girls up-and-down the line crushing the ball. We just kept crushing it right at defenders.[1] L almost killed a girl in the first inning with a line drive, and only got a single out of it because the ball ricocheted right to the pitcher. Their pitcher caught at least six liners, and their suicides kept nailing our girls at home when we loaded the bases. On defense we were outstanding, those hiccups in the second and fourth aside. We had two 1–2–3 innings. We held their best kicker, who kicked four home runs Friday, to just one. The only thing we didn’t do well was run the bases. While St S’s girls were making turns and being aggressive, our girls kept stopping. We probably left 3–4 runs at third because of that.

St S averaged nearly 40 runs a game in their five regular season wins. We held them to 14 twice. I was really, really proud of our girls after the game. It would have been great to win and go to City, but I thought they showed a ton of improvement. We had a group of three or four girls who should be able to blast the ball but can’t quite do it yet. If we get those girls kicking the ball hard, that can turn a good team into a really good one. And hopefully beat St S in the spring.

L ended the season with a team-high seven home runs. The only games she didn’t kick a homer in were our two losses. St S had girls at the corners who were not afraid of the ball and knocked down her low-liners. She kicked four balls yesterday that would likely have been homers against weaker teams. Instead she went 3–4 with three singles. Yesterday she played part of the game at suicide and part at first, swapping with another girl. Those two were awesome together, getting a combined eight outs. Whoever was up front was making perfect throws and the girl at first made the catch every time.

On our way home she asked if we would practice between now and the spring season. I told her we could kick today if she wanted to.

“No, I mean the whole team, not just us.”

I like the way she’s thinking!

OK, it was a big cross country Saturday so a quick update on that.

Man, was it hot. I talked to one of the XC coaches Friday and we agreed there would be no PRs set the next day, as the forecast was for it to be hot and humid and it was an afternoon race. Mother Nature did not disappoint: it was pushing 90 and the sun was blazing all afternoon.

C surprised us a little, though. She didn’t set a PR, but she did run her second fastest 3K ever. More importantly, she helped her team win the team title.

When the race started we were more concerned with whether she would stay in the top 25, which was the cutoff for ribbons.[2] After the gun, we walked out to the midpoint to wait for her. When she came through, she and her buddy were together at 28 and 29, a little back from two of the St P’s sixth graders.[3] Right when she passed us she made a move and passed four or five girls before they disappeared back into the woods.

We ran down nearer the finish line to watch them come in. Our sixth grader who won the first two races of the year was well ahead of everyone else again. Then we started counting. The next St P’s girl didn’t come in until #12. I figured the next sixth grader would be right behind her. But, no, it was C on her heels! Running hard and putting space between the girls behind her. She came in 14th, at 14:15, which was awesome given the heat and humidity. Over a minute slower than her insane time at City a year ago, but still good enough for her second fastest 3K by about 20 seconds.

She was the fifth 5th grader to cross the finish line. More importantly, she was the third St P’s girl, so she was in the points. She even placed ahead of one of her sixth grade teammates who had been well ahead of her a week ago. St P’s top four – the girls who claim points for the team – finished 1st, 12th, 14th, and 15th, which was good enough to easily win the team championship. They got a huge ass trophy for their performance. At practice last night they had a special presentation with the assistant principal and this morning they took pictures with both principals and the main priest. Now they have three weeks and two meets to prep for City, and a chance to take home another trophy.

Full credit: St S played great defense. But this was the best we kicked, as a team, all season. Including the games we scored 40 runs. ↩
This is one of the biggest races of the year, thus the deeper threshold for ribbons. Also it’s the only non-City Championship meet with a team competition. ↩
The pattern this year has been three sixth graders are the first three St. P’s finishers, then C and her buddy E are some combo of 4th and 5th. ↩

Big Ol’ Sports Notebook

September 14, 2017 / DB

I had hoped to wrap up the kickball regular season today. But Irma’s remnants turned yesterday into a drizzly mess, and our biggest game of the year was postponed. More on that in a bit.

M ended her season last week. Her team finished up 5–1 and claimed second place in their division. Just that opening game loss to their arch-rivals, who will no doubt crush someone in the City title game next week. M had a decent season. She kicked better at times. Sometimes she fielded well, sometimes she still got the hell out of the way of the ball when it whizzed by her. As always, though, she was excited to hang out with her classmates and be part of the team. Amazingly, late in the season, she was actually asking me to go out and practice with her. Maybe I get her to kick the ball through the infield by the spring season.

C’s season ended Monday in crushing fashion. They were out of the running for the division title, but were playing the team that was in first place. They played earlier in the season with C’s team losing by 7. Monday, C’s team controlled the game through the first six innings. They got the lead early, played great defense, and kept scoring enough to stay ahead. She had a three-run homer early in the game. Going into the 7th inning, they were up by 2 runs. Then came a total meltdown. They gave up 23 runs! It was brutal to watch, as they made mistake after mistake in the field. Bobbling the ball. Throwing to the wrong base. Turning their back on runners and letting the advance. Girls standing and watching while the ball rolled by them. Everything bad that could happen did. The other team didn’t kick a ball out of the infield and still managed to go through their order nearly three times. C’s team got two runs back in their half, but that wasn’t enough to even make it a respectable loss.

A week earlier C’s team played an amazing game against our big rivals St B’s. Both teams scored two runs in the first, and single runs the next two innings. And then it remained tied 4–4 all the way through to the seventh inning. Neither team kicked particularly well that day, but both teams were playing amazing defense. In the top of the seventh we got a runner on, moved her to second, and then got a ball through the infield to bring her around to take the lead. C made all three outs in the bottom of the inning and we had a 5–4 win. Normal games between good teams are still usually in the teens. You never see 5–4 games!

C was amazing in this game. She took three absolutely monster line drives off various parts of her body – she basically caught one with her lips – and the game had to be stopped so we could check on her. Once she shut off the tears, she made every damn play in the infield. She threw people out at first. She threw people out at third. She beat people running home. She caught at least four balls in the air. She didn’t do much at the plate, but her defense saved the day. After the game two of the girls from St B’s came over to check on her to make sure she was ok, which I thought was incredibly cool.

C made a big jump this year from good player to arguably the best player in her grade.[1] She’s still a little inconsistent kicking, but when she connects she can blast the ball on a line that is almost impossible to catch. As I’ve shared, she’s generally an excellent fielder. Her area to work on is true to her personality: she just needs to take a deep breath and calm down sometimes. You can see her getting worked up, whether by a bad call, an injury, or just the game getting extra stressful. She starts running around a little too fast, looking nervously around, unsure of her play. But, as an older brother of a teammate said, for the most part “C is a beast!”

Now for L. Through a schedule quirk, her team played the two weaker teams in her division two times each before they were set to finish the season with two games against the other good team. In their final game against a weak team, our girls played their worst game of the year. If they were older, you would say they overlooked St L because they had beaten them by 30 runs the first time they played. I’m not sure if 3rd graders think that way, though. Anyway, we were behind the entire game until L kicked a three-run, walk-off homer in the bottom of the 6th to win it.[2]

On to the final two games against St. S to see who goes to City. I watched the first two innings of the first game before I had to leave to get M to her game. While there L kicked her seventh homer of the year to tie it. Midway through M’s games I started getting texts that we had won by 12, but it was really controversial. All I heard that night was the other coach was kind of crazy and some of the St S parents were complaining about a specific call.

Then, the next day, I get a call from our head coach saying that the St S coach had pulled her team off the field at the end of the 5th inning thinking the game was over. The umpire asked her if she was sure, twice, and the coach insisted yes, she was done. I have no idea why she did this, and her story has changed a couple times since the game. Anyway, there was a call to the league office the next day from St S and we were instructed that we had to play the final inning of the game when we went to St S to end the season. Since a division championship is at stake, they want every game played to completion. Which I kind of understand. But, also, she pulled her damn team off the field! She gave up! Twice!

Yeah, the other coaches and I have had some interesting conversations about these events for several days now.

So last night was supposed to be the final night of the regular season for us. And then it rained. We’re still trying to lock in the makeup time, but it looks like Friday we’ll go out there, play an inning, take a quick break, and then play a full game. If either team wins both games, they go onto City. If there’s a split, we’ll have to play a tie-breaker game next week.

The good news is we lead by 12 in the “suspended” game, and we will kick first. Bad news is we’re near the bottom of our lineup. But if we can get some girls on and turn the lineup over, we have a great chance to really extend the lead. Good news is we played excellent defense last week and never let St S score more than 5 runs in an inning. The bad news is we had one 20-run inning and the rest of the game was kind of a struggle on offense. But I think we learned some stuff about St S’s defense that will help us.[3]

The best part of all of this was how everyone was pissed off about it. At cross country on Sunday I was suddenly in the middle of a group of parents who were asking, basically, “What the hell happened?!?!” Most of these parents don’t even have kids playing kickball, they had just heard about it through the school grapevine. St S allegedly had a couple crazy parents at the game last week. Their coach is an odd duck. The other coaches and I keep reminding ourselves to take deep breaths before the game when we finally play. Last night L told me not to worry, “We’re going to beat them.” Oh boy…

Oh, cross country. C ran her first individual race of the year last week. She ran kind of slow – I don’t think she practiced at all the previous week because of kickball – but still managed to take 13th in the 5th–6th grade race. That got her a ribbon. St P’s is really strong in this age group. There’s a sixth grader who has never run before who won the race by nearly two minutes! We had five girls place, which means they have a great chance to win City next month.

And, finally, L’s soccer season began Sunday. She scored two goals and they won, although we almost pissed the game away late when we had a couple kids in goal and on defense who were literally running away from the ball rather than trying to, you know, defend it. I’m helping coach this team so more about that later.

The interesting thing, though, is that for the first time ever L is not clearly the best player on her team. There is another kid who is freaking amazing. And he’s just a little guy, barely bigger than her. He’s so good that he’s playing on an older age-group team, too, and had to leave our game at halftime to go play with them. When he was on the field, we almost never gave up possession and could have scored about 20 goals instead of the five we had at halftime. And he’s not just a scorer. He’s an amazing dribbler and passer. He would get the ball, cut it out wide, see L in the middle, and rifle a perfect pass through traffic right onto her foot so she could immediately control it. Both of her goals came off passes he made to set her up. I really hope this kid plays a full 50 minutes for us each week!

We have two 5th grade teams, so while I’m sure she was the best on her team, I think a couple girls on the other team deserve consideration for that honor, too. ↩
Third and fourth graders play six innings; fifth and up play seven. ↩
The guy doing our bathroom project has a girl on our team. Last Friday while his painter was doing some work, we talked for about 90 minutes on how to defend them better. ↩

Sports, Sports, Sports

August 28, 2017 / DB

We are officially in the busiest stretch of the year for us. Right in the middle of kickball season. First cross country meet was last Saturday. Soccer practice begins this Wednesday. For the next two weeks we’ll have five teams cranked up and rolling through practices and games/meets.

C had a solid sports weekend. Friday night she had a kickball game. They run-ruled their opponents in six innings. She had two singles, a double, and a home run. And, once again, she played amazing defense. She had two innings as either pitcher or suicide in which she accounted for all three defensive outs of the inning. The dad keeping score with me was incredulous, “How did she catch that? What do you do, just crush balls at her at home all the time?” I could just shrug.

The best part about her defense is how she has no poker face about it. After the first out she’ll look around in surprise, like she can’t believe she made the catch. After the second she’ll start giggling. While making the third out, she’s flat out laughing. She could be a stone-cold killer of a player if she was as competitive as some of the girls out there. I’m kind of glad she still looks at it as a silly game.

At her cross country meet the next day a mom of one of her teammates, who was not at the game, came up to me and said, “My 7th grader texted me from the game last night and said ‘C.B. just played the greatest kickball game I’ve ever seen!’.” That might be exaggerating a little; one of his classmates has had some amazing games. But it was still cool to hear.

As for cross country, the first meet of the year is always a crapshoot. You’re not sure how a month’s worth of training will pay off. How will the kids react to running competitively for the first time of the year? How will they manage getting some food – but not too much – into their bodies before the race? This meet throws another curve at the kids as it is a relay event. Kids have a partner and take turns running 1K at a time until they’ve run 6K as a team. While it’s a good way to ease into the season, for some reason this format seems to throw a lot of kids.

New for us this year was C moving up to the 5th/6th race, so no longer was she running first. We watched the 3rd/4th race and soooo many kids were crying at the end. Good times.

Anyway, C was running with her buddy E, as they are the only two St. P’s 5th grade girls this year. They were both consistently in the top 10 of their age group last year, so we were eager to see how they did. During the race they both seemed to struggle. E got the hilly side of the course and hadn’t run a bunch of hills yet. C just looked off; she seemed to be running with choppy steps instead of smooth ones. Boys and girls ran together, so I was doing my best to count where they were amidst the packs of kids. I had them finishing 12th or 13th. We got the results Sunday night and they were actually 11th. Four seconds faster and they would have edged out one of the St. P’s 6th grade teams for the last ribbon. Not too shabby! I think hearing that helped C understand that just because she’s running against older girls doesn’t mean she’s not still competitive.

After the race she said her knees hurt from kickball the night before. Plus she’s been fighting a cold, although she said that didn’t affect her as much as her knees did.

If the weather cooperates, we have a packed schedule this week. L has two kickball games, tonight and Thursday, against the two teams they beat last week. M has a doubleheader tonight and another game Wednesday. C has games Tuesday and Thursday. We’ll try to run her tonight, although her cold has gotten worse and she may take the night off. And L has soccer practice Wednesday.

Friday is a night off from kid sports, but we plan on going to the local high school football game that night before our last lake weekend of the summer.

Opening Day, Part 2

August 23, 2017 / DB

L has played her first two official kickball games, so I can finally share her exploits. Spoiler alert: she did not fail to live up to the expectations we had for her.

Monday was opening night for her team. They started off slow and trailed 25–9 after two innings. But they figured out things both at the plate and in the field, had a couple huge innings, and ended up winning 47–28. If you’re like me and not good at math, that’s a pretty solid comeback.

She singled her first two times up, kicking rockets right at people that stayed in the infield. After some advice from her coach who is also her parent,[1] she found a hole in her third time up and kicked a three-run homer. True to form, she was humble about the whole thing. Coming down the third base line, she had both hands up in the air with #1 fingers raised. Seriously, kid.

I take some blame. When she bought her Alex Gordon jersey in June, I showed her his finger point to the crowd after his game-tying home run in game one of the 2015 World Series. She does that all the time now. I think this was a partial homage to Alex.

Next time up she kicked a grand slam. Fortunately she kept her hands down this time. She also made several good defensive plays.

A good night and pretty solid first game all around.

Last night was game two. It was a blow out from the beginning. We were up 20–8 after one inning and won 44–17. Again she had two singles and two home runs. Well, kind of. Her second home run came with one on, and that runner was the 20th run of the inning, which is the max. So technically the inning ended when that runner crossed the plate. But since L destroyed the ball on that kick, putting it over all the fielders’ heads, I think we’ll go ahead and chalk it up as her fourth homer of the season.

She got her first injury last night, too. She was playing suicide and did a half-dive to try to catch a little popup. She got the ball in her hands but when she hit the asphalt it popped out. She skinned up her knees and elbow, but was ok. Road rash is an important part of kickball.

Yesterday was also our first – and hopefully only for this season – night with three games at three school at the same time. M’s team won easily, and I heard she got on base each time and even threw out a former classmate who switched schools a couple years back.

C plays on an all fifth-grade team, but in a league that has some sixth graders in it. They played a mixed 5th/6th team last night and got crushed. S said C played well, but got frustrated when an umpire called her out when she was clearly safe. She doesn’t get mad like I would in that situation, but rather gets really emotional. She can keep it together during the game, but as soon as it ends she loses it a little bit. Sounds like she played another excellent game in the field, too.

Speaking of the umpires…I normally keep my mouth shut. It’s a hard job, they’re volunteers, the game is fast-paced, and the diamonds are on parking lots so it is easy to confuse which lines are for the field and which are for cars. I always figured either as a parent watching or keeping score, it was never my place to question calls loudly.

But, as a coach of L’s team who knows the rules pretty well, I have a big problem with umpires who make calls based on an incorrect understanding of those rules. So in both of L’s games I’ve had words with the umps when they made a call that I felt was wrong not because of their judgement, but because of them not knowing the rules. The first night I argued a bit but let it go. I pulled up the appropriate rule and was ready to show it to him if he made the same call again.[2] Last night the umpire tried to say there was a 25-run limit per inning. The game was a total blowout and I didn’t see any reason for our girls to keep kicking.

“No, that’s the game rule,” I yelled out to him. “Twenty runs is the limit for an inning.”
“I’ve never played that way,” he responded.
“That’s the rule. It’s 20,” and I had our head coach send our girls out to the field.

This guy has been umpiring the entire time M has been playing, and this rule has never changed. That freaking kills me. The rule book is only 16 pages long – four of which are just about the specifications of the field – and this is a rule that comes up quite a bit. There shouldn’t be any question about it.

Yeah, I may be asked to leave a game before the season is over. Good thing is I’ll be rotating through the girls games, so when I’m with M and C I will (hopefully) go back to my restrained self and let the coaches handle it.

“Stop kicking it to the third baseman! Look where she is and kick it between her and the shortstop!” ↩
He called a girl who double-kicked the ball behind home plate out. The rules clearly state that if a kicker is in foul territory, as she was, this is a foul ball and a strike. ↩