Costa Rica... I keep coming back for more!: Sports Day

So I wrote this yesterday and just now realized it didn't post... whoops!

Yesterday was sports day at school. The school from the town I live in, Pacayitas, came to Mollejones to compete in different sporting events and show off different talents. It was nice to have a break from teaching and I think it is safe to say the students really enjoyed their day off from learning. It was supposed to be fun day, filled with performances and soccer games. It started off that way. Some of my fifth and sixth graders performed a hip-hop dance and it was adorable. Pacayitas’s drum line performed too. To say that the students were enthusiastic about playing the drums is an understatement. As for their actual talent, well, my mom always says if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all… so I am not going to comment any more on the drum line. After the performances came the soccer games.

Like most Latin America Countries, Soccer is huge in Costa Rica. It is as if every kid is born with natural talent to kick a soccer ball. I am constantly amazed by the talent and was looking forward to watching my students play competitively. First the girls played each other. My students started at a disadvantage because Escuela Pacayitas has 60 students and Escuela Mollejones has 26. We only had ten girls to play, so I was asked to be number eleven and play goalie. I said I would rather play in the field, but considering I am twice the size of all the students it wouldn’t have been fair. I was hesitant to accept the goalie position, but I knew I had to play so that my girls could compete. I am secure enough to admit that I was nervous about being scored on by eight year olds. Sure, I played soccer for most my childhood, but I don’t have the natural talent that these kids possess. I play soccer on the weekends with many of the kids from Pacayitas and they constantly school me. However, those weekend games are just for fun and I am not letting anyone down by embarrassing myself with my attempt to keep up with them. This was different because I didn’t want to let my girls down. Now my team had two disadvantages, no substitutes and me as goalie. The first half began and I quickly realized that I might have overestimated Pacayitas and underestimated my girls. My team scored in the first few minutes and I made a few saves. I was super proud of my girls and actually felt bad about having been so worried for them. In the last minute of the first half we had handball in the goal box so Pacayitas got a free shot on me… they scored, and the half ended in a tie. The second half began and my team fell to pieces. Suddenly we were the “Bad News Bears.” They were tired and didn’t want to play anymore. I tried to give encouragement but it didn’t seem to work. They started dropping like flies, walking off the field and taking a seat on the sidelines. The referee didn’t stop the game even though we were play two girls down on the field. At one point two more girls ran off the field to go buy ice cream. They returned to the field and tried to play while eating ice cream at the same time. Still, the referee who, by the way, is a teacher at Pacaytias, continued to let the game go on. I made a save and looked out to the field for someone to kick the ball to. I realized there were only five of my players left on the field so I just booted the ball as far down field as I could and told my girls to run. I guess they didn’t feel like running because within fifteen seconds the ball was flying back in my direction and I was scored on again. Pacayitas scoring pissed off another one of my players so she decided to quit and make her way to sidelines. I looked at the referee and told him that maybe we should call the game since we only had five players on the field and he just laughed at me, which I thought was rude. By the end of the game Pacayitas had scored one more time and there were four of us left on the field. The Pacayitas girls celebrated and the referee celebrated with them. I wanted to punch him in the face, but I managed to suppress the feeling and walked off the field with my girls who then faced ridicule from the Pacayitas boys. I was filled with disgust watching, as the parents did nothing to stop the obnoxious behavior. The boy’s game started and it wasn’t as terrible as our game, though my students still lost 3 to 1. At least none of them gave up.

I was offered a ride home in the bus with the Pacayitas students, but declined and chose to walk home in the 90-degree heat. The bus left Mollejones about fifteen minutes after I had started my walk home so it passed me about halfway to Pacayitas. The students on the bus were beating their drums and chanting “ganamos” which means we are the winners. Not surprisingly, the teacher/referee was leading their cheers and dancing around like a child. I can handle losing in a fair game, and maybe if it hadn’t hurt my students so much I wouldn’t have been so angry, but I was pissed. The lack of respect that these kids have is shocking. Then I came to the realization it isn’t their fault. Instead, it is the fault of the damn teacher who encourages their terrible behavior. I am sad for his students, who are stuck with such a terrible role model. In the end, my students are the winners because they possess much more class and respect. The director of my school is a fabulous role model, and I can only hope that I am half the role model that she is.

So sports day wasn’t such a good day for my students. However, today they were all smiles and were not even thinking about yesterday’s soccer games. It is amazing how children can just let things go and move on. That is something that I hope to take from them at the end of this year… because secretly I still want to punch the referee in the face.

In other news, today is my brother’s birthday. Happy 25^th Birthday, Bryan! I wish I could be there to celebrate with you. I love you and miss you so much!

Pictures from sports day