Blog Epilogue

First of all I want to thank anyone who took the time to read this over the past 10 months.  I started this blog as an experiment to see if I could write down some hopefully funny stories about crazy sports parents.  I didn't know how long it would last or how many people would read it.  As of today there have been more than 80,000 page hits spread out over 10 months and over 25 countries, When I started I thought it might last 2-3 months and end up with about 1,000 hits if lucky.  It clearly exceeded my expectations.

The people mentioned in the blog aren't real.  They're based on people I've met over the years at youth sporting events.  Most of the stories or themes in here are either true or based on some true story - not all, but most.  If you have kids in youth sports then hopefully you can somehow relate to them.  And sadly, as a somewhat truly reasonable sports parent myself, I saw myself relating to some of these crazy storylines.  It made me take a step back from my kids sports.  I yell less and cheer more at their games nowadays.

The blog is really divided into two sections; the first 9 months (Aug. 2012 - April 2013) and the last month (May 2013).  I hadn't planned it this way.  To be honest I hadn't planned for this entire blog to last more than a handful of weeks when I began writing.  However in April I ran out of stories.  I really wanted the blog to go through the May tryout period but was struggling to come up with any storylines to carry me there.  And I had 'mailed in' a few posts in March and April which I wasn't happy about.

So in May I decided to take this in a different direction.  I knew I wouldn't continue writing past this month so I made a decision to 'blow it up'. Instead of going through the May tryouts, watching the kids make and not make various clubs and the usual drama, and then living happily ever-after, etc. I wanted this to truly end.  I decided to take this family to a place where there was just no going back.  A place were I could say 'this is the end, period'.  And while different, and less light-hearted, it's been incredibly fun writing the May storyline and these last few weeks worth of posts.

There have been over 250 comments left by readers.  I kept the vast majority of them, only deleting about 10 which I somehow deemed inappropriate.  Also, I tried hard to be 'consistent' and 'accurate', for lack of better words.  Coming up with names for each girl on the roster, storylines pertaining to these girls, being consistent with other teams and their performance, making sure the number of wins for each team tied out to what I wrote down for individual game results, and so on.  That was harder than anticipated.

Thanks again for reading it.  If you have questions leave them in the 'comments' section of this post and I'll reply to them.