Today was the first day of the end-of-the-season tournament for E’s soccer team. He didn’t participate last year because his team didn’t participate: it’s an additional event, with additional fees.
We went into the first game hopeful: the boys had beaten them a couple of times in scrimmages, but this, I believe, was the first time they played an actual game. It was tied 2-2 when the referee made an awful call, calling a foul on our goalie when it was clearly a legal play. He’d dropped to the ground to reach out and stop the ball, and the attacker fell on him. How that was a foul I’ll never know. No one will ever know. But the ref awarded the other team a penalty kick, and that put them over: our boys lost 2-3. Technically, they didn’t. But technically doesn’t count.
The Boy was devastated. For the first time this year, he was on the verge of tears about the game. “We tied them!” he insisted, and I agreed. Still, what’s done is done: refs make awful calls all the time.
The boys’ second game went much better, with a stunning 6-1 win. They’d played that team twice before, beating them both times. So we go into tomorrow’s games 1-1. We’ll see how it goes.
