Congratulations to our girls’ soccer team, who won the district championship tonight.
Several of my students are on the team, so I had to go watch this — not just our school to cheer but individual students I’ll see in class tomorrow and give high fives.
They went to extra time, scored at 0-0, and they won in the final minute of extra time. In a way, though, I feel awful about it: they didn’t win on a big strike to the corner of the goal. It was a goalie mistake, pure and simple. Almost a beginner’s mistake, I would say. The goal slumped down and began weeping. I felt awful for her: she’s going to feel the whole team did their part, and then she let them down. She’s going to relive the moment endlessly. She’s going to beat herself up over that for weeks. And the team will (and already did) huddle around her and cheer her up, tell her everything is fine — “We did the best we could!” But that won’t help. At least not for a while.