Today’s new word is humility. Humility it is a noun who’s meaning is: the quality or state of being humble in spirit: freedom from pride or arrogance. Last night my soccer team had its first game for this session. We moved leagues from the Over 30 Rec League to the
Over 30 Competitive League. This seemed to make sense since we have pretty much dominated the Rec League over the last 3 years. I would guess that our record in that time is somewhere in the area of 70 wins and 5 losses. We would routinely hang 10 or more goals on our opponents. Before our game I was kicking the ball around with The General, and I noticed this older gentleman, I will venture a guess he was in his mid 40’s, in the corner by himself jumping rope. I found this a little odd as I had never seen this before and I even made mention of this to The General. “Hey Dave, Did you see that guy jumping rope? What is the deal with him? Do you think he is in Ice Cream? (See Previous Blog Entry)” In the minutes before our game we were out on the field warming up, and taking a couple shots on goal. As I had all of my life, before any soccer game, I would always take a look at the opponent warming up across the field to size them up and gauge how tough of an
opponent they would be. As a kid, I would always look for he kid who was wearing jeans, or one that had his shin guards on the outside of his socks, or worse yet wearing jeans with the shin guard on the outside of the jeans. These were normally easy tells that you could dominate the player and team with out a problem. Of course at this age and level of play you probably will not be seeing any of these conditions. But in looking at the other team, they didn’t look like all that much to me. There were a handful of guys who appeared to be a good 15 to 20 pounds over their ideal playing weight. More than half of the team was sporting not just a little gray hair, but most of their hair was gray. And probably the grayest of the heads belonged to my buddy who was jumping rope prior to the game. I would guess their average age was around 37 or higher. My team overall appears to be in pretty good physical condition, and our average age is around 33 including 2 illegal players who are under 30. By the end of the game we had been thoroughly dominated in every phase of the game. We lost 8-5. Absolute humility. My friend, Mr. Jump Rope, he only managed to net a hat trick and a couple of assists. He had one goal that was a one touch to the far upper corner, all of this was done while I was guarding him. And I didn’t think I was doing all that poor of a job guarding him as I had a fist full of his jersey when he scored. It wasn’t a soccer game, it was a lesson. I laid in bed last night, telling myself that I need to change my ways. I need to do things better, I need to get myself in better shape, I need to turn my life in a new direction. Well not surprising to any of you, I over slept and was 15 minutes late to work this morning. So much for my new ways. Don’t worry about me, I am not suicidal or anything. I am just a little depressed. Maybe
it is the fact that I haven’t seen the sun in 3 weeks that has gotten me down a little bit. Still lamenting the evening before and the path I have chosen in life this morning, I climbed into my truck and I thought to myself, life could be worse. What if I didn’t have a garage door opener? Having to manually open my garage door would have really bothered me on this bone chilling Wisconsin winter morning. Or what if I didn’t have a garage at all. At least I am not one of those poor humps that had to run around their cars this morning scraping windows. I apologize to any of you who are one of those humps who had to scrape their windows this morning. But it is you who I used to cheer myself up this morning.
Over 30 Competitive League. This seemed to make sense since we have pretty much dominated the Rec League over the last 3 years. I would guess that our record in that time is somewhere in the area of 70 wins and 5 losses. We would routinely hang 10 or more goals on our opponents. Before our game I was kicking the ball around with The General, and I noticed this older gentleman, I will venture a guess he was in his mid 40’s, in the corner by himself jumping rope. I found this a little odd as I had never seen this before and I even made mention of this to The General. “Hey Dave, Did you see that guy jumping rope? What is the deal with him? Do you think he is in Ice Cream? (See Previous Blog Entry)” In the minutes before our game we were out on the field warming up, and taking a couple shots on goal. As I had all of my life, before any soccer game, I would always take a look at the opponent warming up across the field to size them up and gauge how tough of an 
opponent they would be. As a kid, I would always look for he kid who was wearing jeans, or one that had his shin guards on the outside of his socks, or worse yet wearing jeans with the shin guard on the outside of the jeans. These were normally easy tells that you could dominate the player and team with out a problem. Of course at this age and level of play you probably will not be seeing any of these conditions. But in looking at the other team, they didn’t look like all that much to me. There were a handful of guys who appeared to be a good 15 to 20 pounds over their ideal playing weight. More than half of the team was sporting not just a little gray hair, but most of their hair was gray. And probably the grayest of the heads belonged to my buddy who was jumping rope prior to the game. I would guess their average age was around 37 or higher. My team overall appears to be in pretty good physical condition, and our average age is around 33 including 2 illegal players who are under 30. By the end of the game we had been thoroughly dominated in every phase of the game. We lost 8-5. Absolute humility. My friend, Mr. Jump Rope, he only managed to net a hat trick and a couple of assists. He had one goal that was a one touch to the far upper corner, all of this was done while I was guarding him. And I didn’t think I was doing all that poor of a job guarding him as I had a fist full of his jersey when he scored. It wasn’t a soccer game, it was a lesson. I laid in bed last night, telling myself that I need to change my ways. I need to do things better, I need to get myself in better shape, I need to turn my life in a new direction. Well not surprising to any of you, I over slept and was 15 minutes late to work this morning. So much for my new ways. Don’t worry about me, I am not suicidal or anything. I am just a little depressed. Maybe
it is the fact that I haven’t seen the sun in 3 weeks that has gotten me down a little bit. Still lamenting the evening before and the path I have chosen in life this morning, I climbed into my truck and I thought to myself, life could be worse. What if I didn’t have a garage door opener? Having to manually open my garage door would have really bothered me on this bone chilling Wisconsin winter morning. Or what if I didn’t have a garage at all. At least I am not one of those poor humps that had to run around their cars this morning scraping windows. I apologize to any of you who are one of those humps who had to scrape their windows this morning. But it is you who I used to cheer myself up this morning.
1 comment:
Sergeant Hulka?
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