Boom!

This weekend we had all sorts of sporty happenings planned for Saturday. Jake had a game scheduled at 9:15 am, with the expectation of showing up at 8:30 am, against the “South” team. (Our soccer club has enough decent players to field two teams in Jake’s age group. The teams are referred to as North, Jake’s team, and South, the A level team. As an interesting side note even though the overall quality of play is better on the South team Jake can still completely shut down a couple of their players when his head is in the game.) Max and Rebecca had a 9:45 am game two fields over from Jake’s game and Larry (the coach) wanted the team to show up at 9:30 am. And then Nate had an 11:00 am baseball practice. Oh as an added bonus Nate also had piano trophy judging at 12:55 pm way over on the West End of Richmond (man everything has a Wikipedia entry). A solid half hour drive from all our sports oriented shenanigans.

Originally the judging was scheduled for 9:15 am, but I thought that was insane and rescheduled it. I though it was better to miss half of practice than try to juggle it with all the soccer stuff.

Then this happened (scroll down to 9:20 am).

It was overcast when Larry drove Jake out to the fields. Shortly afterwards we had a brief cloudburst at our home, but then the rain ended. Larry called me from the field and said it was raining were he was and with no sign it was letting up. He would keep me posted on what was happening.

As I loaded up the van with our two youngest soccer players and Nate I noted that the sky had gotten progressively darker and we now had a steady rainfall. This did not look very promising for a soccer game, but I pressed on. Everybody had a raincoat and I brought a big umbrella along for good measure. I then drove over to where the games were located. We pulled into the park and after a bit of casting about found an actual parking space (this at times can be a bit of a challenge).

Just as I lifted the rear hatch I thought I heard the distant rumble of thunder. Hmmm, methinks that the games will be called. I then herded my charges out of the parking lot and towards the fields. I didn’t bother with the folding chair, but I still had a plastic bag containing my purse and spare soccer shirts and a large umbrella. Nate was very helpful and carried the big mesh bag with water bottles and soccer balls. Halfway there my cell phone rang. As I fumbled about juggling the umbrella and trying to dig out my phone I missed the call. It was Larry so I called him back. He wanted to know where we were. I told him we were almost at the little bridge leading to the field and hung up. At this point there was thunder booming about and the fields were rapidly emptying. I felt like a salmon fighting its way upstream. A couple of friends called out to me saying that the games were canceled. I would nod my head and tell them that I was trying to meet up with my husband, who was one of the coaches.

At this point I abandoned the use of the umbrella and furled it up. It struck me as a bad idea to be walking about with a huge open umbrella during a thunderstorm. I finally spied my husband and we stopped to confer. It turns out Jake’s game had started. Only seven kids showed so there would be no substitutes. Jake was playing very well and Larry was really enjoying the game. Larry then rushed back to Jake’s game since it looked like the game was being halted. We would meet up again after Jake was collected.

A few minutes later Larry reappeared with a thoroughly drenched and very happy Jake. Jake had a big smear of mud on his nose from heading the ball and I was very sad I was not able to capture that image (my new camera is currently somewhere between here and NJ). The players were told to seek shelter and the game would resume. If the thunder stopped. Maybe.

It was clear, however, that the recreational games were over for the day. We decided I would drive my slightly soggy crew home and Larry would remain behind with Jake. Hopefully he would get a clearer picture about what is going on.

Shortly after I got home and got everybody changed into dry clothes, the phone rang. It was one of Nate’s coaches. Baseball practice was cancelled. What a surprise. All that was left was Nate’s piano judging and that is unaffected by the weather.

Half an hour later Larry came home. Soccer was done for the day and we would find out later when the game would be replayed.

After lunch Larry took Nate to his piano teacher’s house and it looks like Nate did a decent job. It is not a given that he’ll be awarded a trophy, but he did put in a good effort and the judging takes in account the age of the student and difficulty of the pieces. Oh and one of the pieces was Nate’s own composition, “Torpedo.”

So the results of the days weather piano 1, soccer 0