November Sports and Activities

[mae0111]

What's happening this month?

[mae0111]

DD2 wrapped up her town rec and club soccer season this weekend. Lost in the semifinals to the team that ended up winning the town rec championship. Then her club team had a great game Saturday afternoon against an evenly-ranked team, and ended up winning 4-0. Then they played the 1st place team in the club league today and played really well. They ended losing 2-0, but the 2nd goal was literally at the whistle to end the game. They played really well, and DD2 literally had the weekend of her life. She was totally on point, a wall playing defense. She was sooooo proud of herself - it was so awesome to see. One more school team game, then a short break before indoor starts up.

Unfortunately, she told me that she dropped out of the fall play at school. I'm not surprised. She was playing on 3 soccer teams, the homework ramped up. I thought it would be too much, but I didn't want to discourage her. She hasn't had time to go to any rehearsals, so she finally had to step away. It's not an issue for the play - she was in the ensemble - but I think she was a little discouraged.

DD1 wrapped up pickleball, and is insisting that her winter sport will be rock climbing. Except that there is no rock climbing sport at the high school. It's a club. But she's insisting that it will fill her sports requirement. But it won't. And I'm so tired of arguing about it with her. So I'm just going to let her scramble and figure it out.

[campermom]

Fall baseball ended. Field hockey is ending today. Little DS continues karate year round.

We have a break! Baseball will have indoor practice but my oldest will catch rides since it’s far and team families feel bad for me. This is where I take people up on offers.

Things pop again in January for ski junior development, ski club at school, indoor field hockey. For now I’ll just enjoy the break.

[erbear]

My kids have three more weeks of club soccer then we get to play the fun game of what do we do next year. DD2 should probably switch clubs but it’s so much work 😭. They will probably both play the winter season but no school sport in the winter so that’s nice. I’m coaching personal fitness twice a week but it’s not hard.

[waverly]

Both kids finished fall club soccer season yesterday.

For zero reason, DS’s club is acting like they are practicing next week. I don’t understand why we can’t have a break?

We have PT conferences and high school orientation this week so it will be busy enough anyway.

We will have a few practices and a couple of indoor games in December but pretty light until mid January when it gets crazy again. DS will add rec BB. Both will try out for school soccer. DD will do track if she doesn’t make the soccer team so spring will be crazier.

[mommyatty]

DS is still enjoying his esports team. The people who run it are making me nuts though. For example, yesterday morning (really the night before), there was a huge Fortnite update. It took hours to download, and it’s well-known when the seasons switch there’s always a gigantic update and it always takes hours to download. They announce when it will happen well ahead of time. On Saturdays, DS’s Fortnite group starts at 2:30. The people who run it, who needed to download the updates on at least half a dozen computers, showed up at 1:30 to do it. The very fastest computer (one with wired internet instead of wireless) was at 51% when we left at 3:30, not having played a second of Fortnite. My AuDHD 10 year old planned for the update and got up extra early to get it started before he and his friend were supposed to play. So honest to God my AuDHD 10 year old is better equipped to run this business than these people are.

DD still loves field hockey. The school season is over. She’s starting basketball on Monday. And will continue club field hockey into the winter season. Her big outdoor tournament is the weekend after Thanksgiving, and we are both looking forward to that.

[186momx]

DD had her 1st meet yesterday. It was super small. Only 10 girls competed level 5. She competed all around but didn't do her beam dismount or her back pass on floor so took the point deductions. She did score a 9.1 on vault which is a huge improvement from last season. She also did her bottom half of her bar routine without touching the ground. If her feet hit it's considered a fall so she has been working really hard the last couple weeks on the connections with keeping her feet up.
Food/energy level was horrible and her coach didn't let her eat until it was too late. Next meet is in December so time to adjust.

[sdlaura]

DD’s middle school flag football season ended last week. She’s signed up for spring friday night lights flag football with her same middle school coach and a subset of the team. Now she has to decide if she wants to try out for a winter middle school sport (she may try field hockey mommyatty). She continues to play a ton of softball - she had six games this weekend between guesting with a team Saturday and playing with her team Sunday. Plus weekly hitting and catcher lessons.

DS1 just stated practicing for the winter basketball team that is with friends from school, doing regular jiu jitsu down the street, and has baseball clinics continuing for like another month. His last soccer game is Saturday - they had a rough season as small 5th graders in a 5/6 grade division playing against a lot of big 6th graders. I am organizing an end of season lunch and coach gifts for Saturday. We didn’t have a team parent and I wanted to do something to thank the volunteer coaches for their time.

DS2 is going to try out for club soccer. Which seems crazy to me since he’s only a first grader, but there are already 3 boys teams in his age group for our town league club soccer, and several of his friends already do it and several more are trying out, so he wants to. NBD if he doesn’t make it. I think I’m going to see if one of DD’s friends who plays club soccer and likes to be a mother’s helper will give him some ‘lessons’ to help him feel confident for it. He’s my ridiculously high energy kid so I wouldn’t mind him having an activity to wear him out more.

[dglvrk2]

186momx, I'm sorry to hear about your D's energy level. Hopefully you can figure out a routine for snacking before her next meet. Otherwise, it sounds like it was a good start to her season.

mae0111, rock climbing is becoming increasingly popular where I live.  I want DD1 to get into it, but she doesn't seem interested (yet??).  Hopefully, your daughter can find a way to make this work AND that she enjoys it enough to commit for a while. 

DD1 has a few volleyball clinics this and next week. Then she's off. She's gearing up for state honors band auditions. She made a couple of recordings yesterday and will submit her full audition portfolio (is that what you call it in music world?) in the next couple of weeks.

DD2 has a couple of softball clinics. She's not enjoying them....she says she's the only fifth grader in them and most other girls are in third grade. Temperatures are dropping and practicing when it's 40-50 degrees is not very fun, I imagine. Still, I'm insisting she stick with it.

Both girls have music lessons outside of school too.

All in all, November is a pretty chill extra-curricular month for us.

[mae0111]

dglvrk2, Both DDs love rock climbing! It fills the sports requirement in middle school, so DD2 will do it again this year. But for DD1, it's a club, and we have to pay for the membership to the gym. It's not cheap, but I'll absolutely do it if she's interested in it... she just needs to figure out how to fill her sports requirement as well! I wish is was considered a sport for her...

[mommyatty]

mae0111, can you ask? Our school has a rule that if you can show you are doing a sport that’s not offered that season and you spend at least 5 hours a week doing it, they let you count it as your sport for that season. We considered putting DD in some sort of sports clinic thing that would work on her fitness as a goalie for 2 hrs a week, plus her three hours of club practice to get to 5 hrs, but she decided she would rather play basketball with her friends. I’m glad because it’s less expense and work for me!

[mae0111]

mommyatty, it's a school-sponsored club in the upper school, and a sport in the middle school. So I don't think they'll make an exception for one kid in a school-sponsored activity. I'm happy that she'll do it and enjoy, but it doesn't fulfill her requirement.

If she makes the softball team in the spring, that will fulfill the requirement. But I have concerns there. They only have a varsity team - no sub-varsity level. She has no plans to train in any way in the off season. She does not play club. So she is expecting to walk on to a varsity team as a freshman with no prep and no training. It's... not a great plan. But she needs to stumble here on her own. If she doesn't make the team, she could do no-cut track. So it will be fine. But she's insisting that rock climbing checks the box, and it doesn't - it will just be a fun thing to do.

[mommyatty]

This is going to be long. I’m still mad about something that happened yesterday.

DD is required to do a sport during each of three seasons. Her school doesn’t make them pick their sport until the day the sports season starts, which I think is crazy, but that’s a whole other issue. The first day of the new sport is always a shit show because no one in charge knows who is playing what. On top of yesterday being that nutty first day, it was rainy with thunderstorms, so all the kids had to be inside. They have two gyms, so boys were in one and girls were in the other. We had an email last week telling us to send the appropriate gear for their sport.

Normally, this first day is the day the kids meet their coaches, hear what the expectations are, get their uniforms, and maybe do some drills so the coaches can see what they’re working with. Makes sense so far to me. But this year, we have a new athletic director. He has zero experience as a middle school, high school or college coach or educator. What he has is 30 years as a Major League Baseball scout. He’s this loud, fat, bombastic asshole who has someone drive him in a golf cart the 30 yards from the school gym to the fields. He started the year by telling the kids they weren’t there to have fun, they were there to win.

So this year, he had one of the coaches come up with a workout for everyone. Fine. Whatever. Halfway into the girls’ workout, he came into their gym to proceed to yell at them that they didn’t work hard enough, and that’s why they were losers. (I’ve heard this exact verbiage from 3 different girls.) DD is many things. She’s sarcastic and easily frustrated and salty when she feels like she did poorly. She’s also respectful, coachable and a very hard worker. They just had a terrible season in field hockey, and she already felt responsible for that because she’s the goalie. And the most seasoned player on the team. She worked super hard the whole practice while he kept yelling at them about how they were slow (she recently smoked a former Olympic-level track and field athlete in a race where she had to sprint with a parachute strapped to her… the kid isn’t slow) and lazy and were never going to be winners with their work ethic.

After several minutes of this, DD had a full-blown panic attack. Like a hyperventilating, shaking, crying so hard she couldn’t breathe panic attack. The high school field hockey coach pulled her from the workout, and her own field hockey coach ended up walking her to her grandma’s car since it was the end of practice. She has never had a panic attack before. The only time she’s left a practice in years was at a camp where she wasn’t happy with her own performance, even though they had literally just given her a “most improved goalie” award. She’s coached on her club team by the head coaches of all the elite school programs in our area. She’s been coached by Olympians, US Field Hockey players and coaches in multiple states, and men’s field hockey coaches and players from India, Kenya, and Canada. It isn’t like she’s playing in a rec. She’s being coached well by a variety of coaches with different coaching theories and styles. She’s never been abused like she was yesterday.

I checked with a couple of other parents who said their girls told the same story. One had gotten in the car and immediately said “I had a panic attack in athletics today”. The other said the guy called them losers and screamed at them.

I was PISSED. So pissed I sent a message to the headmaster saying my 12 year old came home hysterical after being verbally abused by an adult man at his school and that the guy needed to be fired. And when I didn’t get an answer, I went to the school and had a serious conversation with the guy in front of the administrator who was there. I told him he was unprofessional and owed all the girls an apology. That I had seen effective, hard coaching, and it had never caused my child to have a panic attack. That if he had said what he was telling me he said, it would not have caused the reaction I saw in my child. He wanted to pull my daughter aside to tell her he wasn’t talking about her (“she was one of the kids really getting after it the whole practice”) and to tell her he wasn’t saying what she heard. I told him absolutely not. That I didn’t want him in the same room with her, and I didn’t want her singled out. That if he felt like he could act like this in front of a large group, he could damn well apologize for his behavior in front of a large group. I told the administrator when he asked which winter sport she was playing “right now I don’t know if she’s going to play any school athletics”.

I am so mad. He was totally out of line. She was still literally quaking and sobbing when she got home.

[librarychica]

mommyatty, I want to know what every other adult at this practice was doing while a grown man shouted at a bunch of middle schoolers like that? I don’t respect that school’s hiring decisions and I am not sure they’d be seeing any more of my child or my money.

[mae0111]

mommyatty, woah. That's insane. What did the administration say? I would be very surprised if you were the only parent that had an issue - you may just have been the first one there. Can you speak to any other parents about it? Power in numbers...

I hope there is some sort of satisfactory response. I really can't think of one other than him being fired and banned from coaching below the college level...

[dglvrk2]

mommyatty, In my state, there is a safe sport rule that there has to be a coach or background checked adult of the same gender in a place with athletes at all times. Was anyone else with the girls besides this..... Butthole?

[mommyatty]

There were multiple other adults in the room.. all of whom report to him. The administrator said yesterday, “We can check with the other adults to get feedback”, to which I replied, “Yes, I’m sure asking them what they think of how their boss acted will return absolutely above-board and honest assessments.”

[dglvrk2]

Nov 5, 2024 10:17:55 GMT -5 mommyatty said:

There were multiple other adults in the room.. all of whom report to him. The administrator said yesterday, “We can check with the other adults to get feedback”, to which I replied, “Yes, I’m sure asking them what they think of how their boss acted will return absolutely above-board and honest assessments.”

I'm sure they'll be spot on... Especially if they're at will employees.
What a mess! I'm so sorry your daughter had to deal with such meanness.

[madringal]

Swim, swim, and more swim.

DD1 is a HS junior now (sob), and season officially started last week although she's been training since July. She swam at a club invite this past weekend and had a great meet. Several PRs, lots of faster swims at finals. Just overall looked phenomenal for a preseason meet.

DD3, swam one of her last 8U meets before again up later this month at that same invite. She had 4/6 PRs, and just crushed some of her times. Her form has really improved and she's getting better at technique work every time she competes. We cut her down to just 3 days of practice a week this season, and it has really helped her enjoy the sport more. Five days was just too much for her.

[sdlaura]

mommyatty, that’s insane. Between this incident and the issues your DS had at the school….and the other student who followed your daughter around harassing her and the school not doing anything about it…no way would I pay another cent in tuition to that school. My kid would be moving to public.

[mommyatty]

Nov 5, 2024 11:24:52 GMT -5 sdlaura said:

mommyatty, that’s insane. Between this incident and the issues your DS had at the school….and the other student who followed your daughter around harassing her and the school not doing anything about it…no way would I pay another cent in tuition to that school. My kid would be moving to public.

Last night, DH said, “Can you remind me why we are still there?” It’s basically because my super shy kid has a big group of great friends there. But I’m getting to the point where it’s just not enough.

[waverly]

mommyatty, I feel like that would be the last straw for me.

I'm not paying $$ for club soccer so that someone screams at my kid. They need to be coaching not screaming. There is no way that I would stay somewhere in that environment. Now of course it is easier to switch soccer clubs than schools, but still in this day and age in education- no just no.

[186momx]

mommyatty, the school coaches are doing this? How burn it down and I would say this allows your DD to not play a winter sport as she needs to work on her mental well-being after being verbally/mental abused by the school coach. I take it your private school doesn't have to follow safe sport guidelines?

[librarychica]

I am about to tear my hair out with coding club. It’s an afterschool activity, run by a very dedicated teacher. Great guy but totally overbooked — coaches a sport, runs science Olympiad, FCA and so on. Both my girls signed up. They have managed to meet 3 times since August, only twice on the originally scheduled day, there have been a lot of last-minute scrambles, and then Saturday I get a text that coding club will be moved to the one day a week we can’t manage a late pickup until January. Then today — but not this week! This week there will be no meeting at all.

Also they have done zero code-related activities from what I can tell. They have had two “what are we doing to do in this club” meetings and for some reason a pizza party to watch wild robot.

I hate to do this because it is DD1’s only non-class activity but I’m going to have to pull them. Maybe they can rejoin in January if it does move back to the originally-scheduled day.

Meanwhile DD2 recruited like all her friends to go so we have this group text that can be summed up as “what the hell is up with coding club this week” and I feel like I’m undercutting the teacher some, but H invited all the kids who are interested to come over to our place to play Karel the Dog and learn some basic programming principles with the girls and him on the weekends. If the club ever gets to the actual subject they will be ready! DD1 invited a friend over too.

[dglvrk2]

librarychica I feel your frustration! What you described sums up my AYSO (soccer) experience. We have very kind, enthusiastic coaches, but they always called practices within 24 of said time and more often than not, the practices ran later than expected by at least 15 minutes.

I was constantly calling in ride favors for DD2.

[k3am]

DD quit her sync team in early October... today she says she wants to quit skating in general. She's oscillated between being super upset that she doesn't have more ice time to not using her ice time well when she's there. She made it to her 6am Saturday private lesson last weekend (6am! Meaning we left the house at 5:35! On a Saturday!), had her whole 30 mins of private lesson, and then bailed on the remaining practice time of the session.

I told her that I may complain about it, but if she wants the early practices, I will get her there for them, but I'm *not* going to do it if she's going to half ass it. Today, she asked to skip practice because of a "stomach ache" - totally unusual for her, so I said okay - and then came in to ask how many more practices were in this session because she wants to quit.

It's expensive. It's far away. She can't get the ice time she wants. 6am practices SUCK. She's about capped out on progress with the amount of time, effort, and money she can dedicate to it. I'm just hopeful that it's 100% her decision and not because she knows DH and I were both getting annoyed with her team/rink. The end of an era is bitter sweet.

DH and I still have to talk about whether we make her finish out the remaining sessions we paid for already, but I'm leaning towards not bothering unless he feels strongly one way or another.

[mommyatty]

DD has started basketball. They are SO BAD. None of the girls has ever played before, and they literally had one week of practices before their first game, against a homeschool team that only does basketball all year round because all their churches have basketball courts and no other sports facilities.

But DD has found she actually kind of likes it. She’s tall with extraordinarily long limbs, so she’s great at defense. I think she had about 10 rebounds in their first game. Their first game where they scored ONE BASKET. Lol. Sooo bad.

[sdlaura]

mommyatty DD’s basketball team a couple years ago was that bad, with mostly kids who hadn’t played before. She still had a fun experience though - and the team stayed together the following year and did better. I’m glad she’s enjoying the sport itself!

[waverly]

My DH is having troubles. He agreed to be assistant coach for Rec BB. He thinks this is unofficial like last year where he "hung out" at practices; it is not unofficial. The coach put him down officially. So thereofore, he needs to do the background check. And he needs to go to the skills assessment which is tonight and he needs to get DS his BB shoes. He doesn't even know that the skills assessment is happening even though it is in the calendar, and I have told him 3 times. I get he started a new role recently (same company), but dude. Dude. This is happening whether you are with it or not.

[soccermama]

DD's club volleyball is ramping up with practices, and they added a tournament for Thanksgiving weekend. I just hope they will be somewhat ready as a team as they normally have more practices together before an actual tournament. I am not happy about our practice times (too late!) & I just hope we can withstand doing this until March.

DS wrapped up his rec season a couple of weeks ago, and his coach asked if the team wanted to do an indoor soccer league this winter & everyone said yes. DS has always wanted to try indoor soccer so hopefully they have a good time playing! Now I gotta pay that fee and I think it will get started in a few weeks.