Aging

I attended Nat’s volleyball game Saturday; we don’t have a good team this season. Part of the problem is the coach; I think she has a drill called “grenade” where the object is to get farther away from the incoming ball than a teammate so it doesn’t look like your fault.

I was also scratching my head a little at the referee this week. We were losing 23-4 (they play to 25) and the other team accidentally committed a substitution violation. The ref dutifully halted play and convened a conference with the other coach. After discussing the infraction for oh, I don’t know, 25 minutes, she then convened a conference with our coach to explain, in complex volleyball parlance, that we got a point. This took only 13 minutes to cover.

The good news is that I had brought a copy of War and Peace and I was able to read it twice during the pause. When the game finally resumed, 23-5 now, we promptly lost the next point. In a crafty coaching move to apparently “ice” the girl about to serve for the win, our coach called a time out. I am serious. (During this break several of the girls had a birthday making them ineligible for play.)

So, we ended up losing but the worst part is that all the snacks were now beyond their expiration date.