The Adult Coed Division
They held a soccer festival recently to kick off the new season and in addition to signing up the u13 girls, there was an opportunity to play in the adult coed division. That sounded like a good time, so I organized a team (shoutout Nikki and Holly), and we did so.
When Brent heard that this was happening he stopped by and said “You know you’re going to get hurt, right? I can’t have you out on short-term (or long, God forbid) disability.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s going to be fun.”
And it was…until the third (and thankfully last) game of the day when I attempted a fancy backheel shot that high school me absolutely would have hammered home. Instead, as I swung my leg in a manner I hadn’t in a long time in order to generate enough force on the shot, I felt my hamstring roll up and that was that.
Still, though, it was a respectable showing by Main Street FC (yes, we were sponsored by the upcoming Main Street Summit...don’t miss it!). Our team of geezers plus Holly finished fifth out of 10 and we had a lead in every game we played before running out of steam in the second half against people half our age. Indeed, it might have been an even better result if the games had been 18 minutes long instead of 36.
The u13 girls, of course, did better, winning their way all the way through to the finals before getting outmuscled by a team of older girls. That was funny because a few hours before that happened they’d been consoling me by saying we’d done a great job competing against people so much younger than us and now here I was saying that they’d done a great job competing against people so much older.
All of this goes to show a very important point of competitive advantages: they are both relative and fleeting. In other words, the very things that might have you in an advantageous position today may be gone tomorrow or – worse – become a massive disadvantage. So push your advantages hard when and where you have them and steer clear of situations where things you can’t change will make it hard to compete (though Nikki, Holly, and I are absolutely ignoring this advice signing up for the adult coed division again next year…provided my hamstring is rehabilitated).
Have a great weekend.
– Tim
