NVCL: The League that Saved Our Summer

Sometimes, just for kicks (or for torture), I look back at my 2019 calendar and see what was happening a year ago. You know, to do a little reminiscing, a little reflection, a proverbial "walk down memory lane", if you will. Here's what memory lane looks like:

Last summer we went to Nashville with my son's travel team for a tournament. We spent four days there, including the 4th of July. The boys exchanged their baseball caps for cowboy hats each night as we roamed around the city with families we'd spent baseball summers with since our kids were seven years old. As you might imagine, that was no fun at all.

 

Then a few weeks later I was watching the Little League team from our very own town win the Southeast Regional Championship in Georgia to guarantee their place for our league’s first appearance in the Little League World Series. A huge crowd of our community members jammed into a sports bar to watch our boys on ESPN. I wasn't really all that into it. Whatever, man.

 

Then my son and I drove the three hours up and back in one day to Williamsport to see the boys play at Lamade Stadium. WE HATED IT.

Yep, last summer there was traveling and there were tournaments and there was Little League and there were friends sitting right next to us sports bars watching games on tv. We might have even shared a plate of nachos. What a weird world it was, right? 

When so much that we enjoyed last summer got canceled this year, most days I tried to look at the whole situation with a glass half-full approach. It was a great time to reevaluate our busy schedules, to spend some slowed-down, quality time with our family, perhaps to contemplate how much we wanted to continue to commit our family’s time and money to athletic endeavors.

And I did that. Through March. And April. And May. And June. And parts of it were wonderful and meaningful. Still, as July crept closer with no definitive change in world events, I tried to tell myself that maybe it would be good to continue our sports-free days of deep introspection and familial bonding. Do you know what I concluded?

NOPE. NO SIR. NO MA'AM. THAT'LL BE QUITE ENOUGH OF THAT, THANK YOU.

Enter the savior of summer in Northern Virginia, the hero we'd been waiting for: the Northern Virginia College League.

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