Surprised

There are good surprises and there are bad surprises. Today we had a bit of both. We had a floorball game arranged for the team I'm involved in training, Lavovi Jajce, against a team from Prijedor, a town about an hour and a half north of us. The bad surprise was the size and age of their team. Bigger and older than ours. Significantly. I wasn't expecting to play, seeing as our team are all teenagers, but they wanted someone to drag the average age up so I was called into action. The pre-match team talk made it clear what Dina, our coach, thought of our chances: "I want you to keep playing, keep trying, even if you are losing fifteen nil!"

The good surprise began with going a goal up shortly after the game started. I was playing in what could be described as a right-back kind of role. I was just waiting for some undefendable attack on our goal. It never came. At least it didn't while I was on the pitch. Floorball is one of those rolling-subs games. The three goals we conceded all came when I was off. At the other end, our players kept finding the back of the net, sometimes from the most audacious angles. I provided three assists as part of the eleven goals we scored, my personal point of satisfaction in a result that surprised everyone. A few people mentioned David and Goliath. To their credit, the opposition we very gracious in defeat and I think most of our team were too shocked over the final score to gloat about it. In a day of good and bad surprises, good was definitely the winner!