I have posted before about my sports indifference. It's a point of contention between Elwood and me, because he thinks a kid should have a sport. I can see where he's coming from. I will sign the boys up for soccer or swimming or whatever. I will get them to the practices. I will take snacks on schedule. But honestly? I cannot muster much enthusiasm for the whole thing.
Today was the MathCounts competition for our area; I went to watch the head-to-head competition at the end. And what do you know, I found my inner soccer mom.
I took along a sock to knit, but when it was my son's turn to compete I had to put it down. I can knit a sock without looking at it -- I just didn't want the distraction. I was sitting in between a couple of knots of students who hadn't made the final competition, and they were chatting and playing cards. "I guess we're not geeky enough," one of them said. I wanted to shush them and say, "Can't you see they're concentrating?"
(But I didn't.)
In the last round, my son was up against a kid who was obviously fast and smart. The first to get three questions right would win the countdown trophy. I was so excited that it triggered my arrhythmia. The boys were tied 2-2 and the other kid buzzed in first with the answer to a messy-looking problem. "Eight?" he guessed. "Incorrect," said the judge.
I watched Alex scratching on his paper. "Ten seconds," came the warning. "Come on, sweetie," I was thinking, until he buzzed in. "Seven," he said, with just a bit of a question in his voice.
"Correct."
He won! Then they announced the results from the individual competition, and he won that too! Last, they announced the top two teams, the ones that will go on to the state competition, and his team came in first! Huzzah! (I don't have many exclamation points for soccer games, but send me to a math competition and I come home full of them.)
I have posted before about our geeky family. (The boys have been playing something they call Geek Football, where one says something like "Hut 1! 1! 2! 3! 5! 8!" and another says, "Fibonacci again?" Last week the 10yo said "Hut 2! 7! 1! 8! 2! 8!" and we blinked blankly. "It's e," he said reproachfully, and we all felt silly.) There's certainly fodder for another post here, about the sports question and our different responses to it. But tonight I am going to wrap it up right here, remembering the grin that lit up my son's face when they called his name, and the enthusiastic high-fives from his teammates. The mathletes, they call themselves.
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