I've been away, but now I'm back...briefly at least

I know I've been a little MIA lately. It's been a busy time in my life - lots of things going on with work and life, so I just haven't had a lot of time to write like I would have liked. Maybe more will come tomorrow.

Yesterday I went to a 5th grade boys basketball tourney that my nephew played. It was fun to see the kids out their scrambling for the ball and putting up shots and scoring. Their excitement when they made the basket was just priceless.

But one game really left me disheartened. When I had gotten to the gym, my sister handed me the program which had a "letter to parents" about how to cheer on their child while they played. The bad thing is they didn't have anything on there to the parents about how to support the refs.

This game was not my nephew's team that I refer to. It was brutal. The kids played very aggressively, and as was the case the volunteer refs missed a lot of calls. To be fair if they had called everything, the game would still be going on. The orange team was having a rough time. Not only were they losing but they were the ones that seemed to be getting hurt. As an outside spectator I didn't really see that the black team was doing anything malicious, it was just how the game played out.

But at one point one mother stood up and yelled to the refs, "What the hell?" and at another a father shouted out, "This is bullshit." Which led to the coach's son, sitting on the bench with an ice pack to his twisted knee yelling at the refs too. At one point one of the refs turned at looked at him and the kid just stared back. I was so wishing the kid would have gotten a technical, because it was just so deserved - him and all the parents.

I was texting my friend Debbie during the game because I just needed to talk and at one point she wrote, "It's no wonder kids kill." Exactly my thoughts. These kids were so irate over a GAME. It wasn't about having fun or playing for them. They wanted to win and when they weren't winning or things weren't going their way, they wanted vengeance.

I will say I was proud of the orange coach at one point when one of his players almost started a fight with one of the black team members and he hauled him off the court and set him down. I was proud that he pulled him out until after the kid said, "he pushed me" the coach said, "that's them playing dirty. We don't play that way." Well, coach, I beg to differ having seen how they play.

Anyway, it just made me sad.