Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
The wind was picking up Tuesday as the Lady Wolverines entertained Evanston in an early afternoon soccer game. Riverton played the entire first half on the Evanston end of the field, hammering kick after kick at the courageous Lady Red Devil goalie.
Riverton had all the offense aside from one statistic. They couldn’t score. It took one of the rarities of sport to get the Riverton offense rolling.
A Lady Wolverine kicked the ball from West to East on the South side of the field (enough directions?), and it bounced off an Evanston player for Riverton’s first goal.
The Lady Wolverines scored two more in the final 41 seconds of the half and won the match 4-0.
At halftime, I asked one of the officials if the Riverton player had earned an assist for the goal. He said yes, she was involved in getting the ball into scoring position, even if an opposing player scored the point.
It brought to mind many other instances when a player scores for the other team.
Perhaps the most famous incident came in 1964 when the Minnesota Vikings were playing the San Francisco 49ers.
The Viking defense was the stuff of legend, anchored by their defense line, that earned the nickname “The Purple People Eaters.”
Jim Marshall, the star Minnesota defensive end, broke through the San Francisco line, forced a fumble, and scooped it up. In the melee that followed, Marshall became confused, turned the wrong way, and raced 66 yards into the Minnesota end zone, scoring a safety for San Francisco.
It is considered one of the biggest blunders in NFL history.
The truth is it can happen in many sports.
You don’t see opponents scoring for the other team in volleyball, swimming, wrestling, baseball or softball.
You do see it in basketball.
In one lopsided junior high game, a player scored all 29 points for his team, and two, the only two for their outclassed opponent. He was confused after a timeout, took the ball at midcourt, and drove to the opponent’s basket for a layup.
The funny thing was the other team defended him as he drove to the basket for their only points of the contest.
This faux pas almost always occurs when the ball is tossed into play at the midcourt line. The player gets confused, drives hard to the basket, and scores unwittingly for the other team.
In the scorebook, the closest defender gets the credit for the basket, since the other team can’t score, since he or she is not on that side of the scorebook.
These situation ands can only happen in a handful of sports. You won’t find it in tennis or bowling.
You do find it in rugby occasionally, though fellow teammates in this most brutal of athletic endeavors would surely hammer their confused teammate to the turf.
Another place you sometimes find the right player at the wrong end of the court is on the ice. Hockey players sometimes make spectacular, highlight-reel quality drives up the middle of the ice, evading defenders with slick skating and superior stick handling before flipping the puck into the net at close range or via a longer-range slap shot. It’s only then that they look up, make eye contact with the confused goalie, and realize he’s wearing the same jersey.
It’s spectacular when it happens.
Don’t blame the kids. Sometimes, the intensity is so great that they lose focus and drift into a surreal world devoid of the normal guidelines we all follow in our daily lives.
They resemble a bat, unerringly flying into a metal building, a place where their built-in sonar bounces off the flat metal surfaces and confuses the poor bat.
Unless you’re playing for Belfry, Montana, home of the fighting Belfry Bats, you don’t have an excuse.
Entertaining, yes, that’s why one of my favorite Three Stooges episodes is so entertaining. Moe, Curly, and Larry, in leather helmets, striped rugby style shirts, and those 1940s style overstuffed football pants, run all over the field, everywhere except the end zone. It’s classic, but it’s just a short fictional film, and doesn’t have nearly the impact it has when it happens in an actual game.
Don’t berate the kids when they make these entertaining mistakes. It’s all part of the game, and too much attention will just drive you batty.