Drama

This weekend was so full of drama! Tristan's football game was out of control. If I hadn't been there, I would have had a hard time believing it actually happened. Let me start at the beginning...

Saturday was Tristan's last regular season game. They were to play a team that they had not yet played, and that team was so far undefeated. We got to the field an hour early, as usual, and some of us parents noticed one of the kids on the other team. He was HUGE! Quite a bit taller and bigger than all the other kids on his team, and ours too for that matter. It was also really weird that no one from the league was at the field like normal. Usually someone is there to check all the kids' ID cards and team rosters. Once the game started, we noticed that his jersey did not have a name on it, and that is highly unusual. So our coach asked the other coach about him. They told us that he had been signed up for 3 weeks and we said ok. The kid had an ID card, even though the coach "forgot" his roster. As the game progressed, it became clear that this kid was not supposed to be on this team. To make matters worse, the referees were the worst I've ever encountered. They penalized our team for things, and then let the other team get away with the exact same thing, which led to their only touchdown, and the refs gave them the points! Then the refs started calling penalties on our parents. He said that we were to close to the sidelines, and we were being to loud. WHAT?! Since when is cheering loudly for your kid and his teammates against the rules? Then, ten minutes before the end of the game, he called time. He said "that's it. I'm done. That's game." That was his explanation. So some of the parents got furious, and before you know it, there are parents from both teams out on the field about to brawl. Cahl and I rounded up our kids and herded them away as quickly as we could. We didn't want any part of that. The whole day was outrageous! After the game, half of our players were crying, trying to figure out what just happened. It was heartbreaking to look at their little faces. We spent the rest of the night trying to figure out what was going to happen next, since next week are the Championship games, and we were scheduled to be there. So... we get a call early this morning from our coach. After the game, all of our coaches had gone to the league and told them everything. And the league took action! It turns out that the kids on the other team was not in fact a registered player, and he had borrowed equipment from someone else on top of it all. So the head coach of the other team was suspended for having an illegal player on the field. Then the referees were also suspended and fined for the way they handled the game. And the league is looking into why there was no one from the league at the field. The final result: the other team forfeited their win, and we came away with the win and the points from the game. Final score 6-0. So we got justice in the end! And that ended up putting us in 1st place in the standings, so we are well on our way to the championships. And Tristan learned a valuable lesson: cheating does not make you a winner. When you break the rules, you get caught, and the punishment isn't worth doing it in the first place.

So... that was our weekend in a nutshell. Totally crazy, but in the end it all worked out.