Conundrum

Let me start by saying that the University of North Carolina Tar Heels won the NCAA basketball tournament last night. This is noteworthy because I picked them to win it all before the tournament so I'm publicly patting myself on the back.

I've decided to start playing soccer again. Lately they've been running announcements on AFN about needing people to sign up to play in the recreational league on base. I figured this is perfect, as it wouldn't be too serious and competitive. It's been many years since I've played competitively so I'm not sure I could jump right into playing like that. I need to get my legs first. Alas, with everybody deployed to Afghanistan, it looks like there won't be enough people for the recreational league. So my only option is to play on the community team which plays against other bases around Europe as well as some local Italian rec league teams - and let me tell you, those guys play hard and serious. This is probably way out of my skill range right now for the aforementioned reasons, but I've decided to do it anyway. And therein lies the titular conundrum. The community team practices every Tuesday and Thursday from 7-9pm but the games are all on Saturdays. With Virginia leaving for the next 2 months, I was planning on spending the weekends traveling which means that I can't play in the games. So I asked the coach if I could just practice with the team during the week and play on the Saturdays when I'm here. He agreed because the team needs people desperately, but the problem is that he's really pushing me to play every Saturday since they're so short handed (the deployment has depleted 75% of the squad). So I'm thinking that eventually he may give me an ultimatum of either play in the games or don't play at all. I really want to play. And I think that within a few weeks of regular training, my legendary and mythical skills will return and I just may be in shape enough to compete at a higher level. But at the same time, I'm really looking forward to some weekend trips over the next couple months. What to do, what to do...


Rik