This game was a personal trial for me. If you weren’t aware, I had a tough week with my car being broken into and my entire football bag stolen. Dealing with insurance, police reports, and trying to figure out to replace all my gear in 3 days was a tall order. Luckily, the support I received from around my team and sport was tremendous and made it possible for me to play. It still was a personal challenge to someone who is a Capricorn and likes to be prepared and relaxed before games.

I arrived at the field at 3PM and picked my new helmet that had just arrived from my coach. My coaches assisted me with putting a new face mask. I then went into the locker room and spent time to put on the old chin strap I had found in my room. It then took time to adjust the chin strap to my head, find a helmet pump to pump in air into the helmet, and adjust it some more.

I had been looking for shoulder pads like the ones I had had but I couldn’t find them online. I think they must not make them anymore. Luckily I had driven up to Everett to pick up pair that was pretty similar on Friday night. Unfortunately, I got home to realize one of the straps was missing. But my teammates came through with straps for me to use so I improvised and got that taken care of, although it took several times of me adjusting the shoulder pads to get them to sit decently.

My teammate had had the exact cleats I had had, just a different color, and graciously let me use them. My other teammate picked me up Captain American gloves which was a big hit. I like Batman but she definitely has that locked down with all her Batman gear so I decided since I like Captain America a close 2^nd that that would be my super hero identity on this team. So the gloves were pretty awesome.

Also, it happened to be a game in the mid 80s. Which is warm in the northwest for this time of year where it has been more in the 60s and low 70s so far. So it’s hot and sticky, and every 5 minutes pre-game I was messing with some part of my equipment, untucking my jersey, retucking the jersey. It was a true test of patience for my personality.  But luckily, I have very positive people around me that kept me focus on what was important and that was that we had a game.

We knew it as was going to be a tough game. The history between the Seattle Majestics and Portland Shockwave is long and storied. It’s one of those rivalries that records don’t matter going into the game. We were coming off a bye week which is also interesting. The extra week is nice to heal your body and refocus but it also sometimes takes momentum from you. The first half we felt that a little bit. We started with the ball and quickly scored on a touchdown to Tessla where she broke 3 tackles on the way to the end zone.

After that play, the rest of the first half we drove the ball but sputtered a couple of times in the red zone. Defensively we were playing pretty well. Some great plays and a couple times they threw stuff at us that challenged us but we were able to keep them out of the end zone.

At halftime we went into the locker room feeling like hey, we did not play our best football but we can turn this up and that’s exactly what we did. We made adjustments on both sides of the ball and took control of the momentum. We created turnovers on defense and the offense finished drives and we pulled away with a 32-0 win. Anytime you get challenged and face adversity and still put up a win is a good day. Each challenge we face is lesson for the playoffs.

We are now sitting at 6-0 and in control of our division with 2 games left. The playoff scenarios are numerous but we will focus on the next game on our schedule which is Everett who we know will bring it physically.

One of the things that strikes me about this team is this picture:

In it you can see there are 5 defenders on the ball and there’s a 6^th in the background on their way. This picture represents to me what this team has and that’s cohesion. We have become a true family.