Daily Rant, May 1: Rams win! Rams win!

Gotta tell you the truth.  This was a dad’s day, lugging the field hockey goalie (my daughter Halle), that giant red goalie gear bag and a cooler full of water (what happened to the days when it used to be beer?) down to Shippensburg U. for one of those eternal, what-do-they-mean tournaments.

In the end, these day trips are all about experience, which is exactly what middle school field hockey players need plenty of.

But it’s funny how a nondescript, six-team tournament attended exclusively by parents and grandparents suddenly takes on meaning when your kid’s team vaults into an 8:50 p.m. championship game under the lights. All of a sudden, it becomes a Big Deal.

And a big deal it was to my daughter and her teammates this day, all of whom played this past outdoor season for the Central Dauphin middle school program. Having lost to a team called Chaos earlier and getting a second crack at them had my daughter and her teammates seriously energized despite the searing 90-degree heat that baked Shippensburg on Saturday.

Yes, there’s a happy ending for the Little Rams (no, I will NOT call them Ewes). They won the final game, 1-0, and the keeper had to turn around and, with the help of her defenders, swat away a ball that was bee-lining for the cage with about five tense minutes remaining. All very dramatic stuff, followed by the inevitable squeals of joy pealing through the south end of Shippensburg’s campus.

So, I don’t feel at all badly that I spent the day watching 13- and 14-year-old girls play field hockey instead of updating the site as I normally would do. This website gig is flippin’ great, everything I’d hoped it would be when I took up the Harrisburg Patriot-News on its buyout offer. Otherwise, I would have been working a track meet for the P-N, all very well of course, but I left the Patriot and went online just for days like this.

It was thoroughly enjoyable watching some terrific young girls achieve. It doesn’t matter that this achievement occurred on a small stage and will soon be forgotten, even by the principals. What mattered is they were out there putting effort while many others were not. That is always what matters about sports.

And just because Halle has a dad with a sports website doesn’t mean the other girls should be left out. And here they are, the champions of the 2010 Shippensburg University middle school field hockey tournament: Abby Zeigler, Britta Beleski, Destiny Barner, Hannah Caplan, Hunter Murdoch, Jaylin Smith, goal-scoring machine Gabby Feaser, Zara Tickner and Somer Meadath, hard workers all. Coaches Steve and Stephanie Heckman and Nick Zeiders led the way. Hope I didn’t leave anyone out.

And I hope there are more days – a lot more days – like this in the future. Great job, Rams!

(Thanks to Dee Murdoch for the picture and the subs. Sorry I was worthless with the giant umbrella.)