Wildcats, Volleyball and One Smelly Gym

Yesterday I spent the glorious, prime hours of my day in...a really hot, really stagnant, pretty stinky gym.  And I didn't want to be anywhere else in the world!  That was my girl, her JV Volleyball team, down there on the courts.  DOMINATING.  UNDEFEATED all morning.  Beat every team in their division.  Twice.  Sometimes they mopped the floor with their competitors, sometimes they had to work a bit harder.  Once, we thought we were down for the count, but rallied, and took over the score board.  It was glorious.  Fun.  Teamwork and confident playing.

Some of the parents of our girls thought since we were the only team in both divisions to be undefeated that we should take the 1st place trophy and let everyone else duke it out for 2nd and 3rd.  Part of me thought so too.  But alas, that is not how tournament volleyball rolls.  In fact, it rolls about 50 different ways, and I mostly don't get what's going on yet, but at least I can tell every tournament sponsor has several different ways to do things that must be officially acceptable.  But back to my girl and her Wildcat team.

We sat out the first game of bracket play since we won our division.    And then...a few games in, and 3 distinctly BAD CALLS...we lost.  We were out.  That quick.  Despite the fact that we still had the best game record for the entire day.  Unfair we cried.  Bad reffing cost us the 1st place spot.  But my devil's advocate said...if we had really been smoking that other team those 3 calls wouldn't have been the game.  We sighed.  We talked about how unfair it was.  Our girls showed their tremendously abundant good sportmanship and did us proud.  We took our 3rd place, took a team photo,  and got the heck out of that 95 degree gym and into our air conditioned cars for the long ride home.   

That's when I started thinking about fairness (and why for everything wonderful could we not find a drive-thru for a coke and fries?!).  How life just sometimes isn't F.A.I.R.  The good guy doesn't always win.  And I began to wonder if this is why we Americans take our sports so seriously.  Why our athletes are almost like royalty from the Little League fields, to the high schools and for sure the pros.  It is the one place where the rules are clearly defined.  Where skill, talent, hard work and determination are most certainly rewarded.  That is the American credo after all.  Work hard, be diligent, do the absolute best you are capable of, and surely success will come.  It's a lofty ideal.  A good one.  It is why our country ROCKS!  Something I try and instill in my children.  And yet, it doesn't always play out that way in the field of life. 

So we must always dig a little deeper.  Know ourselves well enough to know we did all we could and still respect ourselves in the morning!  Smile people!  Throw a little football on the TV tonight, have a little bean dip and a cold drink and cheer like mad!!!