[mandrews281]

I just have to share my favourite moment from Palmetto. It's our last match of the qualifying and we (281) are playing with 1598, and 4748 against teams 435/3140/3506. It's a tough match for us (final seedings: 24th/30th/64th vs 4th/46th/21th). We play some tough defense on 435, 1598 does our scoring, and I have no clue what 4748 did. As the match ends, the unofficial score shows 25-14 our favor.

We get a bit excited to have done so well against 435 and one of the kids on 4748 (I think he was acting as coach) starts asking "did we win? did we win?" We start to calm him down by saying we don't know yet and it really looks like the opposing teams has three 10 point hangs, so probably not. The refs come out to inspect the hangs, we watch, and the thumbs go down for all three hangs. They are all touching the ground, so we start to cheer a bit more. The kids asks again "did we win? did we win?" and we say, yes it looks like we did.

He goes crazy with joy. He starts jumping around "we won!!, we won!". It's like he just won the finals on Einstein!! His team mates are trying to unplug their drivers station and he jumps up on their back, "we won, we won". By this time, I heading to retrieve our cart; but I can't stand to watch this kid not get any love back. So I hold out my arms for a hug. He takes a couple of steps towards me and JUMPS into my arms. I have my arms wrapped around his waist and his legs are wrapped around my waist. I think there were some more "we won"s in there too. It's a good thing he was a bean pole, because if he had any mass to him, we would have been on the floor.

A second or so later, he's down and I'm on my way to get the cart. I start talking to his team mate who also has cart duty, and I start to put 2 & 2 together. This is one of those over-whelmed rookie teams. Any veteran team recognizes them. A drivable plywood base, with poles on the corners which held plastic meshing block discs. No dumper, no climbing, and the drivers are still figuring out how to drive it because it's only been running since practice day. They were 0-7. They had lost a couple of close matches, but had also lost a few blow outs. This was their last match of the season and they had WON IT!! The kid had won on Einstein!

I doubt anyone from 4748 reads Chief Delphi regularly, and I still don't know his name. But the joy in this kid just brought tears to my eyes as I read this to my wife, and it has made my season.