The battle for the Catfish has officially been won. I spent last week regretting not publicly speaking up and getting in the faces of some awful coaches. Instead, mom and I wrote emails to league officials and raised a much quieter, civil, well mannered hell.  But I worried. Maybe those league officials didn’t really do anything. Maybe those poor Catfish were still being verbally assaulted and wouldn’t I somehow be responsible…?

So I HAD to find out. Y’all needed to know, too, right?

It all worked out well. Mike would be coming back from a trip earlier than expected on Friday. I explained what I wanted to do and politely asked if he would feel better if I took my mom “for back-up.” My mom is five foot two inches tall, adorable, has kind blue-green eyes, and truth be told, she is sometimes not assertive enough with her housecat.

Mike said that he’d feel better if I took her with me to “hold me back” – and that was quite different.

We were going to see the Wasps beat the Catfish, and to see if the coaches were treating the players right. We were self appointed, self righteous Catfish advocates.

If we’d been better at this, we would have worn black and red, the colors of the Catfish and blended in with their other supporters. But I wore two shades of pink and dressed for winter because  it was in the high 70s and I’m always cold, and my adorable mother wore a white t shirt and capris because it was in the high 70s and she is not always cold. But I was pleased with my pointy toed boots, both for warmth and for potential buttkicking purposes.

The Wasps beat the Catfish badly.

As we knew they would. But… this time… the coaches were positive. My mom observed that the positive sentiments all seemed to be choked out through gritted teeth – which was true – but they were there nonetheless. It continued this way, despite the more and more lopsided score. We really needed to stay and infiltrate the after game meeting. That was where the real verbal abuse had taken place after their previous game.

If we’d been better at this, we would have had a strategy for blending in to the team meeting after the game.  But instead we sort of stood at the fringes, with our backs to the meeting and pretending to watch another game even though we’d just sat and watched THIS team’s game. I had my phone recording the whole thing. We looked, uh, quite suspicious. Earlier on in the season, it wouldn’t have been an issue, but by now everyone pretty much knows everyone and who goes with which kid.

The coach remained positive. Encouraging. Upbeat. He wasn’t good at it at all. In fact, he probably had to Fo Up in the dugout right after, it seemed to be so unnatural. But hey, that’s okay! I was thrilled. Someone had talked some sense into that guy, and it showed.

We were about ready to go when one of the Wasp’s moms walked by us. I froze. I know her, and did NOT want her to stop and say, “well, hey, Kelsey. What are you doing here, your kid is not a Catfish…?” and then what? Gah. I was holding a folding chair, so I just casually put it right in front of my face and the sun was in her eyes as she passed, so I hope she didn’t see me at all. I don’t think she did.

Then I turned the recording off at a really quiet moment and it made a very suspicious, ‘video ending’ sort of sound. I noticed a long shadow approach and fall across my mom’s back. I turned and a very tall man with a big beard was right behind me. He had on sunglasses, but I could FEEL the suspicion through the lenses. They knew someone had ratted them out for being nasty, they just did not know WHO, for sure. And here were two highly suspicious mommy types.

But our work was done. So Mom and I took off our superhero capes and went home.

Long live the Catfish!

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