And the Award Goes To....

The duration of my illness has, for the most part, concluded. Occasionally, I will hack forth a lung, suck it back in, and continue on with my duties as my coworkers stare in disgust.

For five days I spent roughly 23 hours a day in bed. I had lots of time to think. To sleep. To dream. To moan. To remember. You know how it is when you are delirious from illness and medication...very strange things will come to mind.

Friday afternoon I spent thinking about my soccer management days. Three glorious years of sweating, freezing, dripping at practice and games; scrubbing dirty laundry to perfection; taping and re-taping sweaty feet; traveling far and wide with a bus load of smelly boys; begging the driver to stop for a potty break...usually because Randy had to pee really bad and Dan would only stop for me; chasing hundreds of soccer balls; recording our thousands of shots (notice I didn’t say “points”) in the official book which was usually wrinkled from the last game’s heavy rainfall... The list of memories could go on, but for the sake of this blog I would like your attention to be drawn to the place my mind rested on Friday – taping.

Taping ankles, shin splints, wrists, and knees is an art. Thanks to the injury-prone likeness of Lincoln Christian College soccer players, I had plenty of opportunities to perfect my skills.

And here are my thoughts on the taping roster (There are probably more, but these were the ones I thought of on Friday):
Kirk – Always patient, grateful and content with his wrapping. Long toes.
Edwin – Always hurting his ankle. More often than Jeff, I think. Tape always rolled. VERY skinny ankles.
Shoes – Could not hold his foot back tight enough. Short toes.
Stephen – Wanted a miracle wrapper. Always had a special order. “Today I want it to move back and forth, a little to the right, but not at all to the left.” Would end up wrapping at least twice per practice. Hairy legs.
Matt – Wrapped his own.
Jeff – Thought my wrapping was too tight.
Steve – Had to tape both.
Joe – Left ankle. Thick legs. Hairy toes. Tattoo on calve.
Randy – I didn’t have to wrap his ankles, but I wrapped his wrists for goalkeeping. His gloves always smelled like a decaying rat.
Adam – This is the funny thing...Adam’s ankle was fun to wrap. I think his ankle/leg/foot ratio was just right so the tape glided on perfectly. It hardly ever rolled up.

And that is why Adam wins the “Best Ankles” award from his soccer manager of three years. Congratulations Adam! Because of your best ankles, I felt like I could do something well!