Sports

In my last blog I wrote about how I incorporated "byes" as a family day for members of my soccer team. I always made it my policy that everyone on my team played three-quarters of the games and I alternated the players that played the entire game. I encouraged kids to take "byes" as a family day, so that when I had a fuller roster we could pull off the ¾ policy.

For three days over Memorial Day weekend, it was my honor and sincere pleasure to be the keynote speaker and a guest observer and consultant at the 2009 National Annual General Meeting of the American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO) in Dallas, Texas. The majority of the more than 700 folks in attendance were regional commissioners-the true backbone of the AYSO. The AYSO has long been at the top of my list of best national youth sports organizations. They have the right values, mission statement and an amazing number of dedicated volunteers and staff.

A pink ribbon around my wrist marks me an insider, a camper, a racer, but I’m not.  I am the mother of a racer, a camper, an insider.  But, I am the one returning with food for the kids’ race weekend extravaganza.  After delivering groceries to my kids at the campground, I pull out of the mountain campsite nestled in a coastal forest and drive down the windy mountain highway back to my sister’s house where I will live in the comfort of a warm bed, hot water and a flat-screen TV, while my teenagers make due on old therm-a-rests, inside our twenty-year- old, and perfectly functiona