Season's End

On a cold, rainy day and night, my son's soccer season came to a close. They finished in third place, missing the playoffs for the first time since he joined the team as a freshman two years ago.

This team suffered a lot of losses to injuries, illness, grades, and penalties, and basically had no offense its last four games, scoring just twice, and watching their chance at the playoffs escape their grasp.

He did not play today because he is hurt, with a pulled leg muscle from last Sunday's game with his club team. He probably shouldn't have played in Tuesday's all-important game, but he did and his leg has been worse since.

Today's game was the only blowout loss his team has suffered all year, 1-6, against the best team in the city, which has a 36 game winning streak now over two years. All six goals were scored from "his" side of the defensive line, and afterwards his teammates jokingly blamed him for the loss.

I don't know that his team would have won the game with him in there, but I do know that most if not all of those goals would never have happened.

It's odd watching a game when your kid isn't playing. He was still out there, towering above his teammates, in their huddle, rooting for them from the bench, joking with various friends who stopped by to say "Hi."

He's an upperclassman now, respected, and as far as I can tell, well-liked. He's also had a fantastic season, with two goals, 4 assists, and 21 shots on goal, while anchoring his team's defense game after game. They had five shutouts and gave up 22 goals in the 17 games he played in, and then six goals in the one game he didn't play in.

That's it. Season over. And only one more left in his high school soccer career.

***

Tonight, babysitting my 3-year-old grandson, I thought about my own Dad, who would have been 95 today. How much he would have loved hearing about his grandson's soccer play and his great-grandson's antics.

But he died in January of the year my son first started playing soccer, that September. That was 12 years ago.

As we all know, time waits for no one, and in the end, makes fools of us all. I shivered in the cold today. It wasn't just the weather that got to me, but the passage of time, and awareness of how much that has passed will never be returning.

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