Football, best sport ever. I don’t mean the sport where you massacre each other so you can run an oblong shaped ball into a special spot in the grass. I mean football where you actually use your feet the whole time. This is known in only the U.S. as soccer. And trust me I’m not hating on football — I love to root for the Hawks and I can throw a pretty nice spiral while passing in the front yard with my daddy but soccer, that’s my passion.
You know, there aren’t many places to go practice! I play for Maple Valley Marauders Premiere League and Rachel, my coach, you’re awesome! But anyway, we play out at Ravensdale Park, which is a pretty awesome field. Here’s the catch: it’s private so you can’t just go down there anytime and play. Sad face!
And Tahoma High School’s stadium isn’t just open for grabs on weekends, it’s locked when teams aren’t practicing there on weeknights. Also, I don’t know how many times I’ve gone down to Wilson Fields and every goal has been taken. Petrovitsky Park is pretty nice too, but I think your spot has to be reserved there for practicing and, as you can see most of these aren’t actually in Covington.
Now when I was in CCS, I was there from age 5 to 10, and let me tell you, there is a pretty large age span for CCS. I think it’s ages 2 through 14. Furthermore, every game I had was either at Kentwood High School, or Mattson Middle School. I only had a couple games at Kentwood, and there is only one field so it was a little difficult when there were multiple teams all scheduled to play there. Then there was Mattson. Do you remember that one season where the whole field was mud? Shudder. I remember that season.
But you know, there should be a few fields here in Covington! I mean we don’t have all but a couple schools to practice and have games at! There could be two or so full sized turf fields and maybe one or two that can be downsized since there are so many little kids in CCS. With goals on each side, sizes may vary, a walk way to each field, a few of those huge light posts that come on when the darkness falls over the sun rays, some bleachers, and a little fence around the premises so balls don’t go rolling into the street!
Just imagine it now, five minutes away. And when you get home you don’t have to worry about mud, just those cute little round, black, rubber beads that just magically appear that you have to keep vacuuming up! This would be great so coaches don’t have to fight for a spot on an elementary school’s field! Games also wouldn’t have to consume all of Mattson’s space! And you know, Covington is a great town. Also soccer has really taken off over the last decade, I mean it is booming!
What would make Covington 10 times more awesome, would be a public soccer field close by! Now the only question is, can we afford to do it?
Annie Livengood of Covington is an aspiring journalist and sixth-grader at Crestwood Elementary.
