Why ME? Goes to Pick ME!

It's Saturday night and the sky was getting darker and darker. Hopefully the storm would hold off until the Team Challenge at the Washington Freedom Soccer game was over! Our drive from PG Co. to the stadium was like a mini vacation - from hell. Traffic was horrible and it took us all nearly 2 hours to get there! That in itself was stressful, since we were warned if we were late we would get points taken off. So we were all calling each other on the phone on the way up seeing what exits we had passed. It was crazy, but we all arrived safe and sound.  If they do this again next year, maybe they will consider having some of the events in PG County. We have plenty here for people to enjoy, a professional football stadium, minor league baseball teams, a huge sports and learning complex, major universities, and the brand new attraction, the National Harbor - all in PG Co.!

I'm sorry, back to the story. We were given the object of our challenge a day or so before the event. Instead of all of us having to kick balls into the goal against their mascot, like I thought we were going to do, we had to complete this obstacle course with 5 stations. One for each of the team members. One had to throw the ball in (which I gladly volunteered for!) One had to kick the ball fifteen feet to the next team member, who then had to dribble the ball with their feet through a set of cones, the next person had to kick it into a small goal net, and the final person had be the one to kick it into the goalpost to score the winning point! 

Now for most of you that sounds like a ton of fun I'm sure. But for me, hardly! First is was freezing outside, the wind was blowing like we were in Kansas waiting for Dorothy and Toto to appear, and to make matters worse, "I"  that's right,  "I" was chosen to be the one to kick the ball into the final post to score the points for the team! No pressure there huh! Whatever! I reminded them how I was always the last one to be chosen for a team in gym class. Well sometimes I got selected before the nerd, but most of the time the fat girl got selected last. Why did everything have to hinge on me? I swear God is trying to rip me out of my comfort zone and throw me to the lions! I had no choice. I decided to be a trooper and got all the love, support and "you can do its" from my family and trotted out onto the field like I knew what I was doing.

Norm flung the ball in like a pro, Lya's swift kick had the ball to Charlene in seconds, Charlene bobbed and weaved through the cones so fast it was hard to believe she had never kicked a ball before, then our Coach, Oteal took it straight to the pug! It all happened in a matter of seconds and we were the first to get the ball down on that end. We had a chance to make it all happen. The pressure to perform was now on me (oh joy). I wasn't told that I could kick the ball from a position closer to the goal post, so I took one giant step and had at it.  As the ball creeped to the Mascot, it was like it was in slow motion. My 3yr old grand baby (oops, sorry, my son's daughter! I'm to young and too fly to be a grandma-you'll get that on the way home) could have done better. So into the Mascots hands it went and back it came. Thankfully he shouted, "move closer and kick" When I heard that I felt more confident and in it went! The night ended with us coming in second for the soccer challenge and second overall for the team challenge, having missed the point spread by .5.  Not so bad for a girl a former "fat girl" who was always picked last. Look at me now! Let's do it again! Pick me...pick me...pick me!

So the moral of this long post is, once again we are all being taken out of our comfort zone and we are becoming better for it. The bad memories the may have haunted us in the past are not who we are today, and are certainly not who we are becoming! It's getting easier day by day to look in the mirror and like what is staring back at me. Soon, I won't even remember who the other person was.  GREAT JOB TEAM! GO GREEN!