Yeah, it's Saturday, and I'm going to talk about soccer again. Actually, it's not really this time, but it's not not either. I did however wake up on time this morning, though it barely mattered in the end.
Our game was rained out today. The opposing coach called as we were walking out the door and said it was pouring at the fields. At our house the rain was sort of on and off. It's been like that the whole day since. We did drive to the fields anyway; it kind of seemed like we should. At this point, no games had been officially cancelled, though the option was left to coaches and parents. The one person from the team that we did see had already called us on the way out.
Driving west toward the fields, the sky over the ridge looked like we were driving into the night. It's not even that far from the house, ten to fifteen minutes outside of rush hour, and I could tell those clouds were sitting just past the ridge. We actually didn't really see the worst of it till we were almost at the fields. We got the call at that point that the U6 and U8 games had officially been cancelled as someone had finally contacted the director.
Momma took the team list from me and started calling families as we drove home. Only one family was home, and after getting two or three answering machines, she gave up. If they were still home, they didn't plan on leaving, and if they weren't home, our telling their machine not to go to the fields from which they were currently driving home wouldn't help.
Currently, from my window, the weather seems like near perfect soccer weather. There are different perfect kinds of days for soccer in my opinion, though this is as a player as opposed to viewer. While I might play in the wet, I prefer to keep my ass dry as a spectator.
The rain seems to have let up. The temperature outside is a little cool. It's cloudy enough that the little sun we might see shouldn't steam shit up as too often happens. I did recently see random sun that seemed really out of place in the mostly gray sky.
This is the kind of day where you get wet, and when you play like me, you get a little muddy. Everyone gets the splatter up the back of the shirt from running, and many of us get muddy knees. The mud and the wet grass are so much nicer to slide on too as the friction is much less.
It was on a day much like this that I had a particularly soccer moment. I slid across in front of an attacking player in our box, knocking the ball away, but the other team quickly regained possession. As I was standing back up, still squatting mostly, a shot came right past my face, and I took a face full of turf. It's a memorable moment because it was as if it were in slow motion. The player's foot flashed the shot, and as I watched several quarter sized pieces of grassy clumps shooting at me, I tried to dodge the barrage while trying to get in front of the shot, and soccer field doesn't taste very good.
If I had a dollar for every time balls flew at my face . . .
