The girls, as you can imagine, love staying in a hotel with all their friends. They walk the halls, hang out in each others rooms and generally have a good time being somewhere that’s not at home. Oh yeah – and they get to play soccer in between.
When the girls were U9’s (8 years old), gas prices rose to right around $5 a gallon. We were playing in a tournament that was about an hour-and-half drive. In general, we probably would have driven back and forth, but a few of us decided to stay overnight at hotel because it was going to cost the same as filling our cars with gas. The few of us actually turned into all of us. The girls had so much fun swimming in the indoor pool, getting in the sauna, jumping in the hot tub and then back in the pool again. Then we all headed over to a nearby pizza place and they couldn’t seat us all together for two hours…. That wasn’t going to work, so we headed to the restaurant right next door and they accommodated us on a patio. Kids at one table- Adults at another….Add in the fact that the place had a full bar and it FAB.
In the Fall of the following year, we were talking about the hotel we would be staying at for an upcoming tournament Coach #2 found out we had an indoor pool at our hotel and said the girls were only allowed to swim for an hour. When SoccerMomCubed (SM3) and I heard that, we thought he was kidding.
Me: “Are you serious? The girls love that,”
Coach #2: “Sorry, swimming tires you out and they need to be well-rested.”
SM3: “They need to have fun and bond with their teammates too.”
Coach #2: “Be happy I’m giving you an hour, some coaches don’t let their kids swim at all.”
Me (sarcastically): “Yeah, right! Who would do that?” (SIDEBAR: Coach #3 = NO swimming.)
Coach #2: “They’ll have to find a different way to have fun and bond.”
I looked at SM3 and we got to work on that different way. We created a scavenger hunt that sent the girls all over the hotel to find different clues that that we had placed in various places. The clues all rhymed and SM3 and I had a lot of fun doing it. We had a few cheap prizes for all the girls and SM3’s mom made each girl an embroidered chapstick holder for their bag.
And that’s how Game Night at the hotel was born. The games have gotten much more elaborate – and so have the prizes.
We have played Soccer Jeopardy: We had categories like “Foul or No Foul.” We had pictures of the girls on the field and they had to determine whether an actual foul was taking place.
We have played Futbol Feud: “100 soccer parents surveyed (by me and SM3), “Which piece of soccer equipment smells the worst?” (FYI - #1 Answer – Shin Guards.)
We have played Kicktionary: A soccer version of Pictionary.
And most recently this past weekend, “I Survived a Soccer Game Show”– loosely based on “I Survived a Japanese Game Show.” We had the girls running around with cups of popcorn on their feet. We had them heading soccer balls into buckets. We had them digging for golf tees in buckets of shaving cream, cold spaghetti and JELLO.
The girls laughed a lot. We laughed a lot.
A couple of years ago, one of the parents came up to me and SM3 and said, “Thanks for doing this…. They will always remember this part.” I sort of shrugged my shoulders and thought “Eh, Whatever.”
But Sunday morning at the continental breakfast while about half the girls were eating cold cereal and bananas, I asked them, “What was your favorite game we have done so far?”
One of them said she liked the Soccer Jeopardy. I said, “How’d we do in that tournament?” Another girl answered, “I don’t know – we won I think.”
In Futbol Feud – she gets a BIG RED X. We didn’t win. We didn’t place. We tied one, lost one and won one. It was an awful weekend…. at the fields. The hotel must have been okay. Just goes to prove that soccer is more than just soccer.
One day, SM3 and I are going to sit down and write a small book about these games we have created to sell to other soccer moms and we are going to make a small fortune. Or at least enough to pay for dinner.
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