fubar with postwar miracles

The boy is doing a summer soccer league, put on by the coaches at the high school. It's kind of a warmup/tryout for the freshman team, and from what the coaches have said, as long as the kids show up and do their best, they'll make the team. For the last couple of weeks - and for the next couple - I've been dashing around like a madwoman to get the boy to his games. In fact, I should really be in bed right now because he has games for the next three days and I need to get my ass to work way early so I can leave earlier without there being office drama. But I wanted to say a couple of things about it first.

1. The vast majority of the teams they're playing against are JV teams from other local schools, so the kids they're playing are bigger, faster, and have been part of their teams for at least a year. It's remarkable what a difference that experience makes. There are several kids on the boy's team that he's played with (or against) on rec league teams, so a lot of them know each other, but they're not really a cohesive group yet. And as one would expect, they're getting their asses handed to them fairly regular-like. Last game, the boy got knocked flat on his backside when he was pummeled between two players from the opposing team going for the ball at the same time he was. He's still sore. I'm kind of worried he might have bruised his tailbone. High school soccer is freaking brutal, man.

2. At the beginning and the end of each game, the coach has them do this little chant - "1-2-3-BREA!" Like I said before, the boy has played with a few of these kids before, so I've seen them around since he was 6 or 7. It's damned jarring to hear that chant, because now they all have man voices.