This week we officially wrapped up ALL the fall sports. This year someone from our household participated in two sports- Volleyball and Cross Country. In addition, Kiah volunteered as “ball boy” for our high school soccer team, so he “worked” a game 1-2x a week.
First off- let’s chat about Volleyball! Tera tried out for the volleyball team- and she actually didn’t make the team. However, anyone who was cut from the team was offered a support position called a Team Manager. Tera wanted to try it out and see how it went, so she signed up to take that position. She attended all volleyball practices and was also committed to being at all home volleyball games. She did not go to any away games. The position of Team Manager was a new thing this season, and as parents and coaches we had to work through a couple of hurdles to figure out what Tera should be doing in this position. She did tasks like filling water bottles, retrieving balls, keeping the scorebook, and usually practiced and scrimmaged with the team during practice.
For home games, she signed up to work at the concession stand to support her team. She LOVED working concessions. Like, she found her sport. Her sport is officially working the concession stand. By the end of the season she could have run concessions on her own, and she kept asking me to sign her up for more slots!
I’m going to take just a paragraph here to be vulnerably honest: having a child as Team Manager was hard for me as parent, and I had to fight through a lot of feelings and emotions about this. I felt like I was doing the same amount of work as players (driving to and from every practice, serving at home games, etc) without ever getting to see my child play the actual sport. I think as a parent it’s just HARD to hear that your child didn’t make a team, and all season I just had to battle my own mental thoughts of my child feeling like “second best”. Honestly, I don’t think that Tera ever felt like that- but I sure did! I cried so many tears over this season and I wrestled a lot with some bitterness and anger. Please note: this is not a reflection or a complaint about the coaches or even the sports program. The coaches are wonderful and did so much with Tera as the team manager. I completely understand the need for a sports program to cut some kids from the team (it would be a disaster to have 20 players on a team, for example) so I don’t want to say anything that hurts the reputation or feelings of those involved in the situation. I’m simply communicating that my Mama heart was hurt and struggling over the whole situation. It made volleyball season tough for me, although I sure did LOVE working concessions with my daughter!
Next up- Soccer! Our school only has a high school soccer team, but they asked for younger boys to volunteer at home games to be the ball boy and collect any balls that go out of bounds. Kiah happily signed up for this, happily incentivized by a free voucher to the concession stand. There were only five games so this wasn’t a huge commitment, and most of the commitment involved sitting behind the goal and just waiting around, but he loved it! I also enjoyed being able to sit and watch the soccer games – soccer has always been my favorite sport!
And, finally, I saved the best for last- Cross Country! All three of the bigger kids signed up for cross country and absolutely loved it. Last year they had a cross country team, but they didn’t do any official meets. So when the kids ran in their first meet this year, they fell absolutely in love with the whole sport. So did Theo and I! The whole atmosphere of a meet is unlike anything else I’ve experienced- since it’s more of an individual sport, it seems much less mean/competitive, and everyone cheers for everyone! My kids also did really well at cross-country this year and each of them ran a mile well under 10 minutes. They are really excited to keep running and training and would like to run up for a 5k soon.
And that is a wrap on fall sports! My kids really enjoy playing sports and being on a team, but organized sports is A LOT (and our teams aren’t even highly competitive). We are thinking about what our winter sports season will look like, as this fall season kind of burned me out. I have heard of families who have great rules like “one sport a season” but with four kids that still leaves me running 3-4 directions at once. One of the reasons that we loved cross country so much was that all the kids were on the same “team”. So practice was at the same time, and they all had the same meets. That helped so much! I don’t know…maybe I’ll write another post on my thoughts on this whole sports thing. For now…we rest.
Cross country is the best! I seriously had to grieve when my son fractured his fibula after only the first few meets because I love watching him and his teammates so much! It meant I was able to make it to more of my daughter’s volleyball games that I would have previously missed (we decided for the most part I would go to XC and my husband to volleyball) so that part was a blessing but I was still sad. The meets do have such a wonderful and positive feeling! It is great!