Yellow Card

It was late on a Monday afternoon. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and the air temperature was seventy degrees. I felt the same enthusiasm and drive to win as I do before any lacrosse game. For multiple years this sport has been my life, I had learned the game from my former all-american father, and for generation after generation the sport has been in my blood. I had grown up playing the boys game. When I first started playing girls lacrosse, the rules and regulations seemed complex and unnecessary. After a while, my “boys shot” and I finally began to understand what was expected. This I thought, until for the first time in my life I achieved the not-so-impossible yellow card.

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A yellow card might not seem like that big of deal, and it wouldn’t have been so horrific for me if the conditions of the yellow card were different. The ref of the game was normally a high school ref. She was tall with gray hair and glasses that reflected the sun. From the beginning of the game she had taken a disliking to me. When one of my defensive teammates was given a penalty shot (which I find kind of funny), I ran in front of the goal to block the goalie’s view. The goalie on the opposing team was skilled, I had blocked her view and my teammate had made the shot. The ref was not happy. When in the lineup again, me at attack, she started screaming at me as the draw went up.

“Was that you that walking in front of your teammate!? Bad girl!” She bickered at me.

“You’re my ref not my coach” I reply under my breath.

But a couple of word exchanges in the middle of the game isn’t something worth giving a yellow card for. When the other team and mine had switched sides, a mark of half-time being over, I was in possession of the ball. I can shoot very hard, and from a great distance. Right as I got inside the twelve meter line, I take my stick with the ball in it, and shoot the ball out. The goalie is stunned, and the ball goes in. It’s all happiness for me for a moment. But reality comes “creeping along” again, and the ref gets angry. She starts yelling out mistakenly at my teammate, who had not taken the shot, only to realize it was me who had shot the spectacular shot.

If I had taken the shot in boys lacrosse, it would have counted.
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“That was a dangerous shot! Your teammate was right in front of the goal!!”

“She moved there!”

The ref then takes me aside and lectures me more.

“You idiotic girl you could have hit your teammate!!”

After a couple minutes of being verbally abused by the ref, she tells me to get off the field.

“What do you mean get off the field?” I ask, confused.

“Yellow card. You’re off for two minutes. Go.”

She then hold up a yellow card as I frolic off of the field, shocked. In the bleachers, the crowd is more confused than I am, especially my father. The game starts again and Falmouth is one player down. Due to the ref’s hatred towards me, she keeps me off for much longer than two minutes. By the time I re-enter the game, we are losing 7-2.

At the end of the game we had lost 8-3, or something like that. It wasn’t our best day. However, from the game, I had learned one important lesson. If you’re playing girls lacrosse your teammate moves in front of a goal, don’t shoot.

Go Falmouth!!
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