City Champs!

    I know just a few weeks ago I was writing about Elijah's losing baseball season and the glory of a win but what do you know, after 5 straight wins in the city tournament (which is the tournament for the bottom 4 teams of the division as opposed to the top 4 teams who get to play districts), his team, The Yankees just won 1st place in the Machine Pitch Division.  Crazy, right? It's like the consolation prize, but cool none the less.  It seems something happened near the end of the season and they started playing well together.  Every single tournament game was a nail-biter, so back and forth, and so exciting since they played teams who had seasons just like ours.  I did my pacing, as usual.  I tried to play off my pacing by picking up trash along the way.  I saw a lot of trash. 
   
    What's so funny is when it was all over tonight - they had a little ceremony and the boys got their trophies, and were all smiles for the pictures.  But then, that was it.  Elijah could care less about getting pictures with team mates or hugging his parents or talking over the win.  His biggest desire --- making a bee-line to the mom who brought snacks.  He grabbed his Doritos, Capri-Sun, and cookies and said, "let's go."

If anything, he's taught me soo much about winning vs. losing from a kids point of view.  I have caught myself thinking, "E just really wants to win. It's so important to him." But, you know what?  He's 8.  And while he likes to do his best - he doesn't care that much about winning a trophy that will gather dirt within weeks.  He just liked that with each win in a single elimination tournament, his team got to play one more game and have one more Gatorade and one more bag of Doritos.  From now on, remind me to think like a kid when it comes to sports.  It's a lot simpler and requires a lot less pacing.