Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. By Flixtey (own work).

Ah dear blog readers, you may recall my plight as a reluctant inductee into a leadership role in my son’s high school soccer team booster club. The committee is made up of myself and two other soccer moms whose boys are all co-captains (tri-captains?) of the soccer team.

Why is the committee composed of just the moms and not the dads, too? Very good question. The dads came to the first meeting but disappeared quickly thereafter. My guess is they took one look at what was involved and they got out while the gettin’ was good.

Soccer season is in full swing. We’re actually on a downward slide to playoffs now. Our little committee of three has cut its teeth on several tasks. Although our styles differ drastically, we’ve been able to collect club fees from about 40 families, organize volunteers, hold a BBQ, collect raffle tickets and payments, and host a frozen meat fundraiser. We did a lot of other things, too, but they are too boring to list here.

I am proud to report that I fulfilled my non-elected political platform promise to insert reason into the activities by reducing the number of team spaghetti dinners from five to three. I mean, the boys can only eat so much spaghetti and there are plenty of other activities for which parents can volunteer. Unlike my fears in my previous post about this, my action did not incite riots or revolt. Other than that, I’ve been working as the club treasurer and raffle coordinator. It’s been kind of fun writing checks with someone else’s money.

But the frozen meat fundraiser seemed never to end. Unlike what the title of this post may imply, we are not selling meat made out of soccer players (soccer meat). It’s just frozen animal meat. But it’s a fundraiser for the soccer team.

Anyway, another soccer mom coordinated this task (thank goodness!) But people seemed unable to turn their money in on time, so their checks came to me in fits and starts over several weeks. And some people sent the wrong amounts, so we needed to ask them for more money or to issue refunds.

Thus, the fundraiser seemed to go on forever. BUT I am happy to report that I have received the last payment from a parent, so I think it’s finally all done. I had my doubts for a while.

Another thing that’s been difficult is that I was doing all this and my son wasn’t even playing soccer for half the season. A torn knee ligament required him to sit out for several weeks. It was a bummer to put in all this effort for the team when I couldn’t even watch my son play in the games.

But when my son did come back into play, he came back with a vengeance. Despite the best efforts of the other team to lame him up again, my boy scored the most beautiful soccer goal I have ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot). He was right in front of the net and his teammate passed him the ball at shoulder height. My son headed the goal right past the goalie and squarely into the net.

Everyone on our side of the stands stood up and cheered. Even me, the reluctant, whiney, booster club officer.