The Injury

By Chris

Thursday night was a make-up soccer game for the Strikers. Before halftime, one of our best players, and son of our asst. coaches, went down. This type of thing happens a lot. All the kids "take a knee" and coach runs out to see how the kid is. Kid gets up. Everyone claps. So, I get to the down kid and saw my first REAL injury in one of these situation. A clearly broken arm. I mean, real clearly. Like both bones above the wrist broken, making the arm a very unnatural nearly 90 degree angle at that point. And, he wasn't even crying that bad. Tough, brave little guy, he was. It so shocked me that my head tingled. What a sight that would have been, as I try to comfort the kid and pass out! I held it together though. Of course, Teresa's caring momma instincts kicked in almost immediately. We went to see him in the emergency room. His poor mom was out of town (and Teresa was feeling real bad about for her. . . because mommas want to be with their babies when they're hurt). Dad had toddler daughter and broken armed son to take care of. We got them dinner and stayed long enough to hear the surgeon give a pretty positive report. We've made him permanent captain for the rest of the season (gets to represent the team at the pre-game coin toss, shake the ref's hand, get instructions for the team, etc.), and asst. coach. Teresa, mommy instincts in overdrive, made gift baskets for the boy and little sister, made sure the school Bible Club was praying for him, picked up the boys missed schoolwork and delivered it and spent a few hours decorating a huge posterbord card, complete with soccer balls and pictures of the boy from various games this year. She'll get all the kids to sign it.

And, oh yeah, another kid tripped before our game, hit his lip on a bench causing one of his teeth to go ALL THE WAY THROUGH his lip. Yep. A hole in his lip. One night, 2 Strikers to the ER.

We've got a game at noon today . . . without very many players. Should be interesting.