Nice, let me get a vicarious ride in, after the fact!

My daughter had her last soccer game of the season. Her team had gone undefeated for a long time, but by Sunday morning they had lost two games, and were up against another team that had lost two times. These two teams had played each other twice, each winning once. The difference is that when my daughter's team won, the other team's best player --let's call her #10-- had been absent. The time #10 was there, she had scored five times.

So on Sunday our coach took a look at the field and determined the other team had four subs, and #10 was in position at midfield. We had no subs, unless you count two injured girls who really could not play (but who were wearing their uniforms to show support). So the coach assigned my daughter the job of neutralizing threat #10. And this she did; stuck to her through the whole game, got underfoot more than once, kicked the ball away anytime it approached. Both girls are thin and nimble, and from a distance look about the same, but when they got close together you could see that #10 stands a good 8" taller than my daughter. But it didn't matter. #10 was not able to get the ball long enough to control it, and had to resort to passing it as fast as possible, which she had evidently never had to do before. At one point she kicked the ball right into my daughter's face (perfectly fair thing to do, and she probably didn't mean it anyway), knocked her flat; coach took her out and put one of the injured girls in, but once they determined she hadn't broken her nose (again), she was back under #10's feet. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it!

One of our girls scored twice; the other team did not. Each girl got a little trophy that said "league champions." I normally hate those things, but on this particular occasion the girls looked really proud to get them, knowing they had deserved it.