The final tournament of the 2022 Club Volleyball Season took us south of the Red River to a town that sounds as though it was named for someone’s bandana-wearing Corgi. So like the Joad Family escaping the Dust Bowl in search of greener competitive pastures, our disjointed caravan rendezvoused Friday night in a master-planned, jock-sniffing utopia.
Our hotel was surrounded by sports facilities. You couldn’t throw the ball of your choice without hitting a field, gym, fieldhouse, or health club. The streams flowed robustly with Gatorade and the morning air was kissed with the soothing mint of BioFreeze. People communicated through tribal chants and hand gestures. Dry-fit was la mode and everybody made liberal use of clichés. It was like being in a homogenous suburban Olympic village. As for us, we were just happy to be there and would help the team anyway we could.
The volleyball arena was around the corner from our hotel and sat adjacent to a badminton center roughly the size of an anchor store at a shopping mall. It has to be the largest facility for shuttling cocks in the nation, if not the world. The adjoined parking lots were both full. The volleyball facility was a cacophonous maze of netting and metal bleachers. Players, parents, and whistles all shrieked at irregular intervals. Our girls were assigned to the court in the back corner which would prove symbolic.
The previous weekend in Oklahoma City, I’d noticed a subset of volleyball dads, homogeneous in appearance, conduct, and attire. Though fewer in numbers, the contingent was on the scene the following week, playing with phones and slurping energy drinks. The vibe was unequivocally douchey. These men all had the same fish-like mouth with lips slightly ajar. Most wore baseball caps, tee-shirts, cargo shorts, and flip-flops. Ankle tattoos were required. Greek letters making fraternity symbols, recalling the glory days as rush chairman for Sigma Alpha Epsilon. Also acceptable was the upper ankle wrapped in ink barbed wire ostensibly to keep the foot from escaping up the leg. A mental note was made though I doubt I’ll ever need to reference it.
From the outset, our contingent was treated as unwashed Okie interlopers, undesirables out of our depth, and unacquainted with local norms. The Joad Family was clearly not welcome and presented a threat to the local way of life. The reception was like an early autumn frost as the other teams seemed to share a sense of community. One that didn’t take kindly to strangers.
Coming off a disastrous performance at regionals, our girls picked up where they left off, continuing the trend of poor communication and sloppy play. As I wiggled anxiously in my seat, I calculated my investment in terms of time and money. I could catch a lackluster performance at a random Tuesday night practice at the Jewish Community Center. As an added treat, I’d get a peak at the skirted stick ninjas, their eight-by-ten idol in black and white, and their fuming incense stencher. That didn’t consume much gas and didn’t require a credit card imprint for incidentals.
However, as the morning wore on, our girls began to find their moorings and their early poor performance was dwarfed by the clueless incompetence of the platform official.
In a tournament, the platform referee is the head official. He is assisted by a coach from a neutral team on the floor and two neutral players calling the lines. Additional players from the neutral team man the scorer’s table. This was my daughter’s team’s assignment for the first game of the day. It required an early wake up call, a dash to the lobby breakfast buffet and to the court at 7:15.
As for the blundering idiot cum arbiter, Lance Ito immediately came to mind. Perhaps it was the painstakingly manicured beard. Maybe it was his frumpy physical stature. It might have been his complete lack of competence and control, or possibly the power trip he assumed as the morning session wore on. Over the course of three hours, his performance waned, descending past several benchmarks, including:
–Inconsistent
–Questionably qualified
–Awful
–Awful, but also arrogant
–’Ah fuck it, who am I trying to kid?’
Our girls were struggling enough without the added dimension of ignored lifts, missed lines, and blatant net violations. Once, when a close line call went in our favor, Ito stopped the match, called the line referee to the platform, and tried to talk her out of it.
In the bleachers, a typically souciant group of parents and relatives, watched with increasing incredulity as frustration led to exasperation to seething rage by the end of the morning. When our coach, considerably less souciant and turning bright red, questioned another blown call, Judge Ito reached a crooked hand into the western cut back pocket of his Smitty beltless four-way stretch slacks and produced a yellow card, indicating the second stage warning for misconduct after an initial verbal warning.
I was impressed. I had been of the opinion all morning that the man couldn’t find his ass if a bell were tied to it. I tossed out a casual taunt.
“You showed her, didn’t you?”
After our final pool play match, things got interesting. When Judge Ito descended from his platform to engage in a postgame bullshit and grab-ass session at the scorer’s table with the locals, our coach went over to have a word.
Parents milled around after the match, not only to find out what the hell had just happened, but also to keep our coach from going overboard. We still had bracket play to consider the next morning.
By way of explanation, Ito claimed he could’ve called the match much tighter, but was more interested in making sure the players had a good time. Not only do I detest this ‘everyone gets a trophy mindset, this was a qualifying tournament. One that each of our families forked over a minimum of five bills to participate in. We hadn’t intended to spend over eight hours in the car by the end of the weekend for a glorified friendly.
Now I’ve mocked enough fist swinging, umpire cussing tee-ball parents to know better than to squeeze a bellows toward the flames of dissent at an amateur sporting event. However, a passive aggressive chirp didn’t seem too out of line.
I meandered over to the scorer’s table where Ito had just endured an earful from our coach. .
“Hey man, hang in there,” I said in a friendly tone, leaning toward him at the scorer’s table.
He glanced up and for a moment detected what he thought to be a lighthouse in the storm. He was about to reach for my olive branch when I yanked it back..
“You’ll get better.”
Looking back down, he gave me the trite ‘talk to the hand’ gesture. “I’m good,” he said.
“See, no you aren’t, and that’s the problem,” I continued.
As I was finishing up with Ito, my daughter arrived at my side. Her expression told me something else was wrong. After watching me harass the platform official, she was reluctant to tell me anything for fear I’d make a scene. I, however, was persistent.
“The coach that was down reffing our last match said she gave us bad calls because we gave her team bad calls when we called lines during their game.”
A grown woman had just admitted to screwing a team of twelve year olds as retribution for calls she disagreed with.
Tell me you’re petty without telling me you’re petty.
At this point, Judge Ito and his peccadilloes were relegated to the backburner. If you’ve got a problem with my child, you have a problem with me. Incompetence is one thing; conscious malice is another. Have legal counsel on standby; I’m going in.
“Show me this person,” I said.
My daughter was hesitant. She didn’t want a confrontation. “She’s not over here now. Let’s just go.”
It was then that my wife reappeared. She’d been trying to keep our coach calm and had come back to pull me out of the fracas.
“Which one is complaining about how our girls called lines?” I demanded.
“I don’t see her now,” she said. “She’s the hag wearing the white baseball cap.
Just then, a woman matching this description reappeared having heard our conversation.
“I am not a hag!” she yelled. She delivered her objection as though the allegation was frequent.
She appeared to be in her 60s, but as my wife pointed out later, a fondness of UV rays may have accelerated her physical aging. In addition to the white baseball cap, she was wearing hound’s tooth leggings and a quarter-zip pullover. Her sleeves were pushed up to reveal a large, nondescript tattoo on her right forearm (Yass, kween, show that ink, you baddie!)
“You hag!” I shouted. I’m not sure why. I saw her and could only think to parrot my wife. But make no mistake, she was a hag. One clinging to her youth in the most pathetically desperate of ways. Pro tip—if your kids have kids, don’t wear clothes from Forever 21. Your yoga commitment notwithstanding, nobody wants to see the abandoned terra firma highlighted by an unsavory houndstooth camel toe.
Coach Hag had made a beeline for the office to get the principal. Older, balding, and very tall, the head of officiating was the proverbial cooler head that hoped to prevail.
“What’s going on here?” he asked me.
“I want to know what kind of coach retaliates against 12-year-olds,” I responded. “If somebody’s got an issue with the way our kids are calling lines, I’d like to know about it,” I said. They’re volunteers, and I know that our girls take their assignments very seriously. The up official is getting paid.”
I walked back to the hotel. On the way out, I was behind a man wearing a navy pullover and khaki cargo shorts. Around his right ankle was a barbed wire tattoo. Evidently having a recidivist foot, he’d added razor wire ink to the top.
Things remained heated after I left. A protest was filed. Hands were laid on one of our parents and words were exchanged. The overall mood was ugly. I was disappointed. As a former resident, I have a fondness for the Lone Star State and look forward to any visit. Saturday morning was so bad as to influence my opinion. Of course Houston is my adopted hometown and as such, I’ve always wondered if the true northern border runs along I-20.
After a festive team dinner Saturday night, Sunday was entirely different. I was contrite but still didn’t know what to expect. Things got off to a bad start, when I discovered housekeeping had discarded my admission pass, while electing to save the empty Diet Pepsi can and Belvita wrapper that had fallen out of the overfilled trash can. At the gym, Judge Ito had been reassigned and the Hag was nowhere to be found (tanning, perhaps). Our girls found their stride and after losing the first set in the semi-final, they won four straight sets.
And the Joads loaded their wagons and returned to the red dirt of their home. Silver Bracket Champions.
