I guess you’re thinking that this post has something to do with soccer…and it does. And more.

Congratulations to the lovely and talented Casey and her high school teammates on winning their third consecutive county title and their fourteenth in the last eighteen years last night.

Final score 4-0.

There was an indescribable combination of joy and sadness watching the girls celebrate on the field at the final whistle knowing that for some it may be their last game after years of club soccer, hundreds of games, thousands of practices, and more bumps, bruises, scrapes, concussions, and even more traumatic injuries than we care to think about.

For the equally lovely and talented mrs tbogg and I, it is bittersweet knowing that Casey will continue playing at the collegiate level, but unfortunately quite some distance away; we won’t be the parents on the sidelines anymore. Between club soccer and Little League/Pony League we have given up weekends and family vacations for thirteen years while shuttling the L&T one from practice to practice, game to game, sport to sport. I remember a weekend, when she was twelve ,when she played in two Pony League games and three soccer games with us driving from field to field and her in the backseat changing uniforms.

We made a conscious decision when she was little to let her attempt any sport she was interested in to see where her talents lay. The only rule was that once she began a season, she had to play it out to the end. With the exception of her football career coming to an end because of a fractured collar bone at the beginning of the season , she upheld her part of the deal. I’m proud of the fact that she never missed one game in any sport because we were on vacation or had some other family business to take care of, because we wanted her to realize that being a part of a team meant being there for your team. I’m also proud of the fact that she didn’t balk at playing in leagues or on teams where she was the only girl, and for being the first female permitted to play on a boys team for a Catholic school in San Diego.

Now our garage is littered with balls of various sizes and colors, baseball gloves, bats, kicking tees, golf clubs, tennis rackets (the only sport she plays right-handed for some reason), and an appalling collection of not-so-fragrant cleats and running shoes.

So I guess this post is about more than a single soccer game.

True story: when Casey was, I’m guessing, five she played her first season of soccer and she was awful. Really really awful. Standout awful in a field of kindergarteners; that kind of awful. I ran into her coach in the off-season and he asked me if she was going to play again the following season. When I said yes, he just looked at me and said, “Really?”.

And she did and she hasn’t stopped since.

Mission accomplished.