I felt a bit guilty about that, but who am I to decide not to pass on an invitation?
A few weeks ago, the new coach called and said we'd been offered an opportunity to join a relatively new club (still nearby) that was willing to give us scholarships, uniforms, trainers - a much better deal than the local club.
We asked The Girl what she thought, and she thought cheaper is better as long as the team is still together and good. Partly because the basketball program was (IMHO) messing with my daughter, I said "to heck with loyalty to the local club." K joked that we'd been on the same team for 6 years, and now we'd been on 3 teams in a month!
Last weekend the team went to their first tournament with the new players. At this age, there are some girls on the team playing in HS, and therefore can't play with us until their season is over. So we got 3 guest players to join us in the tournament.
I was a bit stressed on Thursday night and Friday, when I realized that the first game was at 7:45am (why do they always do this to the team farthest away?) and it was at least an hour's drive. K had a game himself on Friday night, and would be getting back late. So I decided to drive down on Friday night, which meant making reservations Friday morning and packing, planning, etc. We were also taking Camillia.
We got on the road without much problem, but when I looked for my directions I found that they hadn't printed out. I'd only printed out the map, which was too big! So when we got to the right area, I gave The Girl my phone and asked her to find my navigation program and put in the address of our hotel.
Bless her heart, she figured it out. When the voice came on, it said, "Take the first legal U turn." Guess that meant I was going the wrong way! lol
The next day we got up early, and the girls played two good games, shutting out the other teams 2-0, and 3-0. Yay! Camillia scored 2 goals and the new Goalie kept the other teams from scoring.
On the way home, the Girl found out she could still make it to her basketball game! We had told them she wouldn't be there, assuming that we'd be gone.
The Boy was coming home to visit, so I told him to meet us at the game. The Girl had a great game and didn't even foul out! She scored 11 of her team's 19 points. And her brother got to see her! She won 3 games in one day.
The next day she was tired and kept falling over the ball during the first game. One of the substitutes didn't come to that game, as she had a prior church-related obligation. One of our players hit heads with the other team, and had to come out. So they played nearly half the game one player short. That team was tough, but rather thuggish, so I was glad when we beat them 1-0 (we'd only needed a tie.)
The second game was around 4pm, so we drove home and ate lunch and I put a roast in the crock pot and tried to take a nap. We convinced the Boy and his GFF to come to the game, and we all drove back to the tournament.
When we got there, we discovered that the tournament was behind schedule, and they were saying that we might not get to play the championship game! (toss a coin?) Finally they decided that the game would be more than an hour late, and they would find some lights.
The Boy was most unhappy to hear he'd be sitting around for another hour, but they managed to eat hot dogs and bear with it. There was a tent giving away Rockstar Energy drinks (with parental permission). I drank one and it made my stomach hurt!
The sun went down and finally the girls got to play. One player who was out with the flu came to try to play, and we got our substitute player back from church. The first 5-10 minutes were intense, as the other team was extremely fast and good. But after awhile the team relaxed and although the other team got some shots off, our team seemed to have more control of the ball. But neither side scored.
The other team had 6 substitutes, and we had a girl with the flu on our bench. She had to go in for another player once, but only lasted a few minutes. We had a few opportunities to score near the end of the game, but the shots were off. One girl was so disappointed in her kick that she almost started crying.
So we headed into two sudden-death overtimes, to be followed by a penalty kick shoot out (which is hard on a parent). The first OT came and went quickly. At almost the end of the second OT, the ref called pushing on the other team.
So they had a free kick about 30 ft and to the right of the goal, and the teams lined up in front. At the last minute, the coach told The Girl to take the kick. I thought she was going to kick it into the crowd so that someone could kick it in. When she kicked it, I thought, "Oh no! It's too high!" and it looked like it would go over the goal. At the last second it dropped and hit the back of the net.
There was a second of silence, and then all the girls (and parents) started screaming.The Girl fell to the ground and the team ran and jumped on top of her, and when she got up she said she had dirt in her mouth.
The boy jumped up off the ground and said, "That was The Girl, right?"
It was so great. We didn't have to go into penalty kicks! We won the tournament! Her brother got to see it! The goal made it worth the wait! All the new girls had a great tournament, and proved they were worthy to be on the team. One of the substitutes is now thinking about joining us!
It was dramatic. It was wonderful. I'm sure we'll be talking about it for years.
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