Sunday, October 25, 2009

Softball Season comes to a close...with a bang!

Today was the fall tournament between my team, Mingechevir, and Ganja. I'm so proud of my kids for a number of reasons. Firstly, the season started rather slowly. We usually only play in the summer so as not to interfere with school, but due to some funding restrictions we needed a fall season. My kids rose to the challenge. They rearranged work schedules, etc. in order to play. Also, we lost our sitemate Nate. Nate was our one male sitemate and he returned to the states because his PC term came to a close. Therefore, it was just us ladies dealing with all these boys. Luckily, one kid, named Mensur, was an immense help. In fact, Mensur (aged 15?) was so reliable and helpful we made him captain of the team (and he speaks zero English!). Mensur took the responsibility to heart and literally became couch: corrected kids, helped kids, gave us our lineup, etc. He did the whole thing. I love this skills transference thing. You can tell he learned a lot.
Sadly, our second game was cut short. A group of Azerbaijani males (maybe my age) decided to play soccer on our field while we were playing. Never mind the abundance of empty fields all over the place...they specifically wanted to obstruct us. We tried to get them to leave, but a throw down nearly ensued so being the PEACE corps volunteers we are, we left. sigh. that blew.
So Ming won the first game 16-15 and the second game was cut short while Ganja was up in the count.
My neighbors were so excited about this tournament that I got inundated with questions about who won when i got home. Good stuff. We'll play again in the Spring.
Thanks again to everyone who donated money to this cause. It's a good one.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wonderfull! I loved this posting. I am from Mingechevir and I study Political Science in a Ph.D. program in Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Tx. Yea, go Red Raiders!!! Thanks for the posting and please keep us posted.