the roof, the roof

The roof of my mouth, while not on fire, has a certain hurtiness about it. I'm quite sure I know why this is. I spent a large portion of yesterday yelling and or talking loudly.

As per usual for our eight week spring soccer season I was at the fields only slightly late. Along with The Boy one other of my U6's showed up for the game, and the opposing coach was happy to agree that we'd play two versus two. We made it through two thirds of the game before The Boy decided he'd had enough. No amount of urging would compel him to continue playing, and once again the opposing coach was obliging. His team was being absolutely creamed by my guys, though to be fair, The Boy never does really give an entire shit about playing soccer as opposed to just playing, so the other team was actually being quite handled by only one of my guys. I was doing everything in my power to slow him down, and by the end of the game he was doing everything in his power to get the ball to The Boy, however, as I've mentioned, The Boy just doesn't have it in him.

Game two, U10's. We had enough time between games yesterday to run to Burger King (no need to point out the ridiculousness of fast food on soccer day thank you very much) and speed back to the fields.

Where to start on this game? Most of the goals score by the other team were goals my guys should have stopped. How do you get eight and nine year olds to be more aggressive on defense? We certainly could have won this game if I could instill in my team the usefulness of working on passing and shooting with your left as well as right foot, and perhaps this game will be a good way to work on that in our practices this week. We missed at least three goals because the shot was from the left of the goal and taken with the right foot. The kid that missed them has an excellent foot on him and is the same kid that could have scored from the half line earlier in the season.

To their credit, my U10's mostly stayed nearly in position and bunched up much less than usual. They actually passed the ball a number of times and showed us some beautiful plays involving multiple passes. I was immensely proud of the work they did and the fact that they are slowly starting to learn.

We had a couple of hours between soccer and roller derby, too much of which I spent taking a nap. I may have mentioned in the past my disdain for naps as well as my need to not take them. I only ever wake up disoriented and slightly irritated, not exactly the purpose of a nap, and they never seem to be the least bit restful to me.

The bout was exciting even if Hard Knox lost to Memphis 110-55. I'll try to only say nice things, and this is generally my goal as an announcer, to only say nice things. Last night was just hard on a person who attempts to say only nice things.

The highlights of the evening-record ticket sales, record merchandise sales, new location proved we can bring a good crowd of mostly new fans. Word of mouth should make our next bout even bigger. The new location issues that were of concern seem to have been handled handily by support staff/volunteers/husbands and boyfriends and girlfriends of our derby girls. Several of our new skaters are a little less new, perhaps one could say even a little less virginal in that they've skated in a bout against a truly powerful team.

The not so highlights-someone didn't seem to have brought their B team to play our B team. I'm not sure exactly what makes ours a B team because we did have a few of our stronger skaters on the track, but for the most part we seemed to be giving some of the newer and less experienced skaters their chance. As someone pointed out at the after party though, no one drives six hours to lose.

A final highlight-derby is awesome, and I love the way it brings people together. As I mentioned at some point in my announcing, there's nothing like derby to bring the two ends of our lovely state together. And there's a certain something special when, during a timeout for the referees to huddle and discuss referee stuff, watching as the pack dances to the music, girls in Memphis red and Hard Knox green doing a family friendly bit of bump and grind. And they call it derby love.

And so I shouted and hollered and yelled and spoke loudly into a microphone all day. I'm sure I spent some amount of time at the after party being a vociferous bit of an ass. It's cool, but damn if the roof of my mouth isn't just a little hurty today. My throat is tiny bit raspy, but having been an announcer and slightly less a fan, at least I wasn't screaming then and voiceless now.

Oh, and the final, final highlight, the beefcake card. Being a boy, I'm obviously not allowed to join in the coo tag game our skaters so love to share, so when one of our skaters gave me my beefcake card I felt inclined to share. She had brought and was passing out a deck of playing cards which featured mostly nude male models. She was kind enough to let me pick my own, so I was lucky enough to end up with the one that wasn't wearing bondage apparel.

The trick is to not make a huge point of the card but to hold it just obviously and wait. Soon enough the victim looks over and aaaaaaaagggggggghhhhhhhhh they realize they've just seen a cock. Is it only gay men that enjoy seeing cock? Straight men and lesbians I can understand, and they are obviously the most fun targets of this game, but one would think at least a couple of the straight ladies would mind a little less.