About last week

Me and my oldest at the
2022 USL League One Championship Game

I'm never sure how much to write about myself and my personal experiences here but then I go back through my Twitter posts and remember that I would regularly tweet my way through my experiences of visiting my in-laws and that oversharing has never been something that bothers me. Kids, you won't remember this, but way back when the internet first became a thing, we were warned never to put personal information on there and that danger was lurking around every corner. If you'd told people in 1999 that there would come a time when people would just get in cars of strangers that they summoned from the internet, the moral panic about that would have been through the roof.

But at this point, most of my life is online. I mean, if you wanted to you could go see my dad on Google Maps waving to the Google Car in front of my childhood home, which brought endless delight to my youngest kid who is the one who actually found him there. So oversharing online is the route we're going to go.

Last week was my kids' Spring Break. As it so happened, Tormenta had an Open Cup game Wednesday and a home match Saturday and my oldest was looking forward to both. Now, I don't know if you remember being 15, and I don't want to say my experience is a universal one, but when I was 15, spending time with my dad is not something I looked forward to doing.  My oldest is 15. I'm not about to claim that spending time with me is something he necessarily wants to do, but it's something he's willing to do when it comes to Tormenta. 

I think I've mentioned this before, but when I first started covering South Georgia, he wouldn't always come with me. If he did, it was because friends of his were going and he wanted to hang out with them which, fine, is normal teenager stuff. He'd go hang out with them and when the game ended I'd tell him to meet me by the corner flag and he'd wait for me to do postgame interviews and then we'd head home. 

I don't know that I ever asked permission for him to start joining me on the field postgame for interviews. I think we just kind of did it once and no one said anything, so he started joining me on the field. The players and Manager Ian Cameron all seemed ok with it and, over the course of the 2022 season it just became our thing.  Even more than the game or being right up close to the action, getting to be next to me postgame became a highlight for him. I'd ask who he thought we should interview (every game, in typical teenage boy fashion, he'd say "I don't know.") 

Even before I started covering Tormenta games, I'd let him come with me to one high school football game a year and sit with me in the press box. Around the time he was 10 or 11, I'd tell him "I'm never going to be the cool dad, but if you are willing to come with me to some things, you'll get to have some cool experiences."

I think it's safe to say that idea culminated (so far) in 2022 when Tormenta won the USL League One Championship. He wasn't allowed on the field in the immediate aftermath for the celebration, but after about 10 or 15 minutes, I motioned for him to come on there with me as the excitement was still going. He and I were both splashed ever so slightly with championship-winning celebratory champagne, which I'm pretty sure is an experience neither of us ever expected to have in our lives. 

(A close second is when co-owner Darin Van Tassell let him try on the Championship Ring at this year's season ticket holder kickoff event. I've had family members who said they haven't seen him smile quite like he did in the photo of him showing it off. My wife's already said that's one of the ones we'll use when it comes time to find photos for his senior page of his high school yearbook.)

Modeling a championship ring

He continued coming to games with me all through last season and so far into this season. He'd be extra happy when one of his favorite players would score because he knew we'd get to interview him after the game. Despite my best efforts (and, to be fair, of Cameron's as well), he would not ask a question during the interviews. He still hasn't, but maybe this year is the year. He certainly enjoyed getting to know the people in the press box and was very excited when he was the only other follower besides the creator of the 2023 Spotify playlist Tormenta used pre and post game. He's a little disappointed more than one person is following the 2024 playlist, but he's managed to get by. (I won't say which one he likes more.)

All that is the long introduction to lead up to last week. It was his Spring Break and he was looking forward to no school. As Tormenta had their media availability on Tuesday, I figured I'd take the day off from my day job and he and I could go watch them practice and then he could sit in on the press conference before their Open Cup game Wednesday and Saturday's matchup with Lexington. 

We arrived at the practice fields and made our way down to watch. He's enjoying himself and even if he wasn't outwardly excited, I could tell he still thinks it's cool that Cameron and the players recognize him and gave him fist bumps or hand shakes. He meant no disrespect to his high school coaches (one of whom works in the Tormenta front office), but he said it was nothing like his practices, which is probably good on both sides. A high school practice shouldn't be run with the same expectations as professionals and if Tormenta's practice did look like a high school practice, then things would not be good for Tormenta.

Midway through practice, I asked him how he's enjoying it and he said it's a seven out of ten. He'd certainly want to go again if he could, but he said he hoped it wasn't the highlight of his Spring Break. (Literary people will see this as the foreshadowing that it is.)

Anyway, practice ends and Cameron and Tavio D'Almeida head off to do a television interview and we're standing around waiting to make our way to the press conference. Shortly afterwards, Cameron makes his way back and starts saying how he's been talking to my son's assistant coach and wants my son to give a self-scouting report on areas he needs to improve. I could tell he was caught off guard by this, but he manages to regain his composure and list off areas he thinks he can get better. To my surprise, Cameron turns to me and asks me to evaluate my kid. I do, pointing out areas I've seen that can be improved on and Cameron says those are things the Tormenta guys work on as well.

So that's Tuesday. Wednesday morning I wake up and head to work, excited about the game that night and to watch with my oldest to see if we can see what they did in practice is implemented into the game that night. At about 10:30 that morning, my wife calls and wants to know if I can get home. She said my oldest is quite sick and needs someone there with him. It's clearly pretty bad and while I'll spare you the details, it's not pretty when I get home.

A few hours later, he's showing signs of appendicitis and rather than risk waiting, my wife decides we need to get to the Emergency Room. The doctors and nurses there are great and after some tests, they determine it's not appendicitis, but rather a "severe gastrointestinal viral infection" which is as bad as it sounds. He's basically told to drink clear liquids, rest as much as he can and basically do nothing else for a few days until he's feeling better. 

We get the diagnosis and around 5:30 and in my head I'm thinking "we can get him home and I can still make it to the game," but I'm smart enough not to say this out loud. I'd already text the media relations team at Tormenta and Darin Van Tassell to let them know I wouldn't be there because we were at the ER with my oldest. I didn't want them to think I was skipping out on them, especially since they'd all seen us at practice just the day before.

I end up listening to the game as I'm driving around filling prescriptions or watching Tormenta's 4-0 win on my phone in the CVS waiting area, which is not the ideal place to be watching a soccer game. 

Fast forward to Saturday and my son is starting to feel better (seriously, this bug is nothing to trifle with. I got the JV version and it knocked me out for 48 hours), but he's not feeling up to going to the Lexington game. I get there about an hour early as I usually do for games I'm covering just to check in with various members of the Tormenta front office and get any last minute updates that they can tell me before kickoff. 

I make my way up to the pressbox prepared with my normal score prediction, (2-1 Tormenta, every time... I have no special insight as to who will win, let alone an exact score, so no matter who Tormenta is playing, I will always predict 2-1 Tormenta) and as I do, one of the guys up there gives me a card with my oldest's name on the envelope. 

Following Tormenta's 3-0 win over Lexington, I do my interviews and head home and give him his card. He opened it to find the front office staff as well as co-owner Netra Van Tassell had all signed a get well card for him, which was incredibly thoughtful of the staff there. In addition, defender Preston Kilwien reached out to me on Twitter to say he hoped my son felt better while Nick Akoto liked a tweet where I said he was sick and I'd be missing the game. (Presumably that was a supportive gesture from Akoto and not him liking that my kid was sick and I wouldn't be there.)

None of them had to do that, but they all took the time to wish him well. (I have another story about another example Kilwien's kindness, but we'll save that for another day.)

All that is the long way of getting to my public "Thank You" to the Tormenta organization, its players, coaches and staff past and present, who have allowed me to cover the team and encouraged me to have my son be a part of that experience. They certainly don't have to welcome him in and if they said "sorry, he's got to stay off the field during interviews," I would get it. 

But they don't. 

From the top on down, everyone there welcomes him and allows him basically the same access they allow me. So to be able to have something that my teenager wants to do with me and for the organization to be, for lack of a better phrase, to be so cool with it, is something I am grateful for. 

Darin Van Tassell has said  Tormenta is in the memory-making business. In this case, they've succeeded in that.