The Mystics

Alex did her first travel ball tournament (since she was 7) this weekend. I will have to say I think she enjoyed it more than I did. I kept thinking of everything that I needed to be doing at home. Anthony was leaving on Sunday for his mission trip, his laundry needed to be done, he needed to pack, we needed groceries, and it would be nice to spend a little time with him before he left for a week. He is at the age, though, that when he is left home alone all day, he doesn't think of it as being neglected but more that he is lucky because he has been left home alone all day.

The team Alex played with was a collection of girls from different teams in her Little League. They practiced only one time together before the tournament. Since we changed leagues and this is her first year in this Little League Alex didn't know a lot of the girls before this weekend. This didn't seem to bother her - all the girls acted like they had been friends forever. Alex went into it thinking she might do a little pitching but thought she was going to play more catcher than anything else. She ended up pitching all three games on Saturday and did so quite successfully. There was only one run scored on our team in pool play. Wow! Their defense was tight.

Every pitcher has their habits - Alex's is to fix the dirt on the left side of the pitcher's mound. Before every pitch.

We had one game that started at 8:40 Saturday night on the field at the foot of this cross. It was really pretty with the sun setting and shining a kind of red glow on it.

Although the beautiful cross gave us a moment's pause it did not have any affect on the tone of the game, these coaches argued over/discussed thoroughly every call.

These were the first four conferences in the third game... Can we not just let the girls play ball? When you only have 1 hour 15 minutes to play a game you don't need to spend a lot of time doing this. We found that the pool play games went quite uncontested but when we got into the tournament play the coaches were much more vocal.

We then played on Sunday morning at 8 a.m. By 8:15-ish there was a gentleman (I use this term loosely) who was already thrown out of the park for his behavior in yelling at the umpires.

There were conferences in this game also...

We puzzled over the fact that these grown people were acting the way they were over a softball game. For 11 and 12 year olds. Then you realize where they are on this beautiful Sunday morning, and probably every other beautiful Sunday morning March through November. I don't want to insinuate that if you don't attend church on Sunday morning you can't watch a game without losing your temper but I can't help but wonder if there is not some correlation. Another factor could be the amount of money they have invested here. These are girls/families from Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Ohio, and many other states. They come with their trailers painted with their team names, filled with gas grills, matching bat bags, and skort wearing mothers with matching shirts. They even have a caddy with wheels that hold all of their matching bat bags. The girls no longer even carry their own bat bags. All of these teams have been playing together at least all of this season - one of them had been together for four years. Then, to add insult to injury they are getting beaten by a team that has been together since Wednesday. This is a financial investment to them and a weekend of exercise to us. If I had thousands of dollars invested in this, would I be acting that way?

In the end, we didn't win the tournament but our girls had a great time, made new friends, and got to ride go carts on the way home. Alex thinks that is a successful weekend.