TG's soccer team clinched the title of STYSA Western Division champs yesterday. My soccer mom days are winding down, but they're going out in style at the State tournament this coming weekend!
The Western Division tournament this past weekend was like the fireworks before the grand finale. The games scheduled for Saturday were rained out and stacked one after another on Sunday...but on a field closer to us. A cool, dry breeze shoved the rain away, making it a perfect day to be outside, whether you were running up and down the field, fighting for the ball, or sitting on the sidelines, biting your tongue at bad calls. Then one of the teams missed their first game - knocking them out of the tournament, and giving TG's team a break in between their two other games. It couldn't have been any better!
The timing is perfect: TG and I are both pretty tired of spending whole weekends at soccer fields, or driving to and from soccer fields. It's still going to be a bittersweet ending, though. This is her fifth year with the Cosmos - ten seasons with many of the same girls, growing together out of puberty into young women, and with Coach David and his wife Coach Christine, who both bubble over with soccer enthusiasm. When TG first started with them, their youngest son was just a toddler. Now he's yelling advice and criticism from the sidelines!
I'm grateful to David and Christine for hanging in there despite the raging hormones, attitude, tempers, egos and tears. David made those girls mad, and made them laugh. He made them see they were tough and classy. He made them proud of themselves. There were years he thought about quitting, seasons when he seemed to care more than the girls and wondered if he was wasting his time, but when the next season rolled around and he saw how many girls were returning, he always got fired up again and determined that THIS would be the best season, ever. And it usually was.
This season is no exception. State...here come the Cosmos!
