Farewell, Tigers
"Good Season Tigers!" the cake from Sam's Wholesale read just 30 minutes before.
Just 30 minutes before, when, at the pizza after-party, Coach Tiger called each player to the front to present each a season-ending trophy and a congratulatory high-five as parents and fellow teammates erupted in praise.
The game was done. A 1-1 tie against the Wildcats, who were a tough team to shake the first game in a 1-0 victory.
Just 30 minutes before, tiny Tigers crowded around a single table, eating as one, for the last time, talking of goals scored and butterflies caught and the trophies soon to be had.
Just 30 minutes before, feeling the tide of inevitability, Coach Tiger called his charges into one last, tight circle.
"One, two, three ... Tigers!" Hands flung upward and a high-pitched symphony of togetherness echoed off the walls of the restaurant and back around again.
And with that, they approached with a sheepish "Thank you" and an occasional embrace. Then, somehow, they seemed to melt away into the ether, dispersed, leaving behind a small portion of their lives as sums of a whole.
All that's left, 30 minutes later, are the empty styrofoam cups, the cartoon that no one is watching anymore, the quarters no longer being turned in the prize machine, the pizza slices stripped of their cheese, the words of a cake now consumed and fueling early-evening sugar rushes.
The abolute desolation of it all. The finality.
It will be only a few short months before the Tigers don a new totemic color, with a new name, with a new coach, with an unfamiliar cast of teammates chanting "One, two, three ..."
Will they remember?
Coach Tiger will. And after all of his motivational inventions, he failed to deliver the most important message to his charges.
"No, thank you."
3 comments:
New coach? Why must they have a new coach when it's apparent the present one has seemingly done a fine job?
BTW Eric, your new links title is the dog's bollocks.
Your writing, in fact just about everybody's in blogger land, makes me feel really inferior. Nice and flowing.
I remember playing soccer as a kid. The only thing I remember about it besides the field is learning how to kick the ball from underneath so it would go soaring. I loved that!!!
dan, even if i did coach in the fall, the local ymca makes it so that teams are all shuffled around.
it's like you're a team for a month and a half, then you're just a bunch of kids with no connection.
i don't know ... kind of sad in a way. i'm sure i'm reading too much into it, as always. i just really got so much out of it.
e+
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