EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

A couple of Tuesday's ago, my youngest daughter had a soccer game in the evening. Normally they don't play on the weeknights, but there was a glitch in the schedule, and this was the only time they were able to organize a game for them to play.

So while the team was warming up, I noticed that one of the soccer coordinators was setting up the goalies by himself. We've known him for awhile now since my husband has been with this league for eight years, and I yell out, "Ken, do you need any help? Because if you do, Isaiah will help you." Isaiah immediately looked at me with this expression like, "What????"

Ken said, "Yah..sure! Hey, Isaiah, come grab this net and set it up on the other side."

Isaiah was looking at me like, "Great."

He's helped my husband take down nets many times before, but he's never put one up. So he's standing there clueless while Miranda is trying to tell him what to do. She's saying to him, "Figure it out Isaiah. Oh my gosh!!" Of course, that's not helping. He's just getting annoyed.

Finally, Ken is done on his side and then walks over to help out Isaiah.

Done! All finished.

But no, he was not done with him yet.

Ken then asked me, "Alicia, is Gabe going to be here?"

I told him that he'd be there later and that he was on his way. I asked him if he needed another ref. He said he did.

Then he says, "Isaiah, do you want to ref with me?"

Of course, me being a loud mouth, I say, "Yah, Isaiah will do it!"

I'm sure if he could run off the field at that moment, he would. And it's not because he doesn't know the game, it's just that he never reffed a game before. But, this was cake. The team is U6 (under 6 years old). How hard could that be.

Ken hands him a shirt and his own whistle. The kids and I are like, "Yay, Isaiah!!" Embarrassing, right?

Here's Ken giving him a quick pep talk. "You know the game, Isaiah. Just watch the ball when it goes out of bounds, pay attention to whose ball it is...and there are no offsides called."

See..no problem!

Well, apparently it was for Isaiah. He was totally getting self conscious because of Miranda. She was constantly telling him what to do the entire time. All it did was annoy the heck out of him. During the quarter break, he dared her to ref. She was like, "Sure, I'll do it!" Ken said it was fine, so Isaiah handed her the ref shirt.

Here's Ken going over the same thing he did with Isaiah.

There she is on the right side, doing her thing. She was nervous too and realized it wasn't as easy as it looked.

Finally, during the last half of the game, Eli kept asking if he could ref too! Well, turned out he was old enough to ref a U6 game! Miranda happily handed the shirt and whistle over to him.

Waiting on Eli to blow the whistle so the game could start!


You did great! You all did!!