It's the 5th-grade flag football league title game. The Seahawks are trying to repeat as champions. They have the ball, down three, at the 40-yard line (which is actually about 20 yards from the end zone). There are a mere 15 seconds on the clock. The Seahawks coach (aka me) calls the play. Seahawks QB Lil' S2 takes the snap and scans the field. He fires the ball to his buddy and main receiver Z running a crosser. Z makes the catch! He snakes his way past some defenders, across the goal line! Touchdown! Seahawks take the lead with mere seconds remaining! They will be back-to-back champions!
But wait... the referee throws his penalty marker. It's a flag-guarding infraction on Z.* No touchdown and a ten-second run-off of the clock. The game is over. The Seahawks lose. Many players on the team break down in tears. The coaches shake their heads and mutter curse words under their breaths, wondering what on Earth would possess a referee to call that ticky-tack bullshit on the final frickin' play of the championship.
*Flag-guarding, if you're unfamiliar with the rules of flag football, is when the ball-carrier uses their arms to block the defenders from pulling the flag. Usually, it's not called, especially at this level, unless the player intentionally and obviously uses a chopping motion to deflect the defender's hand, which, I will point out, Z did not do. I think he was holding the ball kinda low, but he always does that and almost never gets called for flag-guarding. This was the type of thing, where if the ref doesn't call a penalty, nobody thinks anything of it. I don't think flag-guarding was even on the mind of anybody on either side of the field until the ref threw the flag.
So went my Sunday evening. It was such a gut punch, and I'm legitimately bummed about it. I know it's just elementary school rec football, but that doesn't mean you can't care. It's good to care. Caring is where all the satisfaction and fun and personal growth comes from. I'm glad I still care about things. One of the biggest downsides of growing up as a Gen Xer was getting pummeled with the notion that it's uncool to care. Nothing could be further from the truth. Caring is the best. So, yeah, you can care about winning and losing in kids sports.
You just can't be a psycho about it. But I'm not. I never am, and I wasn't in this instance. I didn't say a word to the referee; I didn't gesticulate in an aggrieved manner; I didn't even do that thing coaches sometimes do, where they complain to other parents on their sideline, but in such a loud manner that, in effect, they are complaining to everybody at the game, including the referees. I did none of that. I took my place in the high-five line, congratulated the players on the other team and their coaches, and then sat down my team and gave them a short talk. I told them that they just didn't get the call. That's it. They did enough win, and probably should have won, but the call went against them. It doesn't take away from how well they played in the game--all season, really--and they should all be proud.
I don't know how much solace they took in that. But one of the dad's from the other team came up to me, and said he thought I said the right things to the kids. He also said it was a bad call and that he wished there was a way we could have had one more play to decide things in a noncontroversial manner. I appreciated that especially since there was no reason for him to say anything to me at all. It's not like we were sitting next to each other at a dinner party. I had no idea who he was. He just started talking to me. But it was really cool of him to do that.
Lil' S2 took it hard.* He was sobbing after the game, and he rode home with S (we had to drive separately), presumably because she's the more comforting of us two. He already got his "life lesson" spiel from me and probably just wanted some unconditional sympathy from his mom. He played really well though. They hold the semifinal and final on the same day in this league, so we had two games, and he was almost perfect on the day. We had two QBs, but one recently broke his finger, so Lil' S2 had to take every snap for us, and he was throwing dots. In the first game, we ended every possession we had with a touchdown pass. In the second game, he threw a bad pick-six at the end of the first half (his one big mistake) and put us behind the 8-ball, but we battled back, and he threw the go-ahead touchdown with 1:10 left on the clock, and then after they quickly scored to retake the lead, he immediately drove us downfield and threw the aforementioned nullified game-winner. It was cool and very reminiscent of Kurt Warner in Super Bowl XLIII.
*He seems fine now, though. One of his buddies who's also on the team came over, and they seemed to be happily playing video games when I peeked through the ajar door to check on them. That's one nice thing about kids: They heal quickly and not just physically.
So, I'm sad we lost, but it certainly went better than our baseball playoffs. We got thumped 15-4, and it was somehow less competitive than the score indicates. Lil' S2 had a terrible game, with two strikeouts in two plate appearances (is it worth mentioning he fouled off a few pitches? probably not, but I did it anyway) and a quasi-drop in right field (it wasn't an easy play, but a decent little leaguer makes the catch). After the drubbing, Lil' S2 said he wished he had "skipped the game," and proclaimed that he didn't want to play baseball next season. Fine with me, but he also said that last year. So, we shall see.
Alright, that's all for today. Just an update on flag football that literally nobody wanted. But I needed to get that all out there. Thanks for being my sounding board.
Until next time...
