Christmas came early this year. At least that’s what it felt like for me as I finally got to see Marcus doing what he loves...Lacrosse! Of course Marcus was even happier than I was.
A few months ago Marcus tried out for a club lacrosse team called the Seattle Starz. Club teams give you more playing time and help you get recruited and since Marcus wants to play college lacrosse for a D1 team and desperately needed to make up for his lost lacrosse season (thank you Covid) we were thrilled when he made the team that only had a few openings.
His first showcase and tournament was a couple weeks ago when he got to play for the first time since May 2019. We flew out to Philadelphia and drove a couple hours to Delaware, spent the night there, and woke up early for the showcase that had been moved to Maryland at the last minute because of Covid. The staff worked so hard to make sure the boys got to play and enforced strict rules about masks and social distancing which I was happy to comply with. Anything to keep things from being canceled.
The weather was a beautiful, sixty-five degree day and was the perfect setting for a day that Marcus has been working towards for so long. A showcase is where they players play in front of different college coaches, do drills, and then if they’re lucky, they get selected to play in the All Stars game at the end. Marcus wasted no time showing the coaches his stuff and was all smiles as he ran around on the field. He was named MVP by his coach, one of 8 MVP’s out of over 200 players. He played great until the MVP game when he broke his stick across somebody’s back. Luckily he brought a backup stick and after the game we found a sporting goods store nearby. Maryland/Delaware was a great experience. We ate Chik Fil-A twice, got a little sunburned, and decided Delaware definitely had a Rhode Island vibe to it.
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| Breaking his stick on a kid’s back. Ouch! |
After the showcase, we drove a couple more hours to our terrible hotel in West Chester, PA where we could literally hear a guy snoring next door. Marcus was tired and sore but excited for another day of playing. His team had three games the following day and they won all three by quite a bit. By the time they played their last game, there were a bunch of recruiters watching from the sidelines. Marcus pulled his hamstring in the final game so he had to stop playing but the recruiters saw enough because he’s had four different offers to play lacrosse in college. They are all D3 schools so he’s not taking them but we’ll use them as leverage to get some D1 attention.
After icing his hamstring and taking naps, we spent a few hours exploring Philadelphia which was sad and awesome. Sad because the place was a ghost town. No one was on the streets and all the touristy places we planned to see were closed. But it was awesome because it took us no time to see everything as we didn’t even have to watch out for cars to cross the streets. We were even able to park illegally right in front of the Rocky steps (which I beat Marcus to the top of because of his pulled hamstring). We ate delicious Philly cheesesteak sandwiches from Jim’s and that ended our night in Philly.
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| Empty streets of Philadelphia |
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| On top of the Rocky steps |
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| We ate one of the best sandwiches I've ever had in my life here. Sadly, all the other places people told us to eat at in Reading Terminal were closed. |
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| I think this was the Captol building but I can't remember. It's old and historical and George Washington walked there so it's cool. |
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| Empty Reading Terminal |
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| The building where Ben Franklin drafted the Constitution. Not a single person was around to take a photo for us. |
Getting a break from my kids and their remote learning was also the best thing to happen to me in a very long time!
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