My Journey Into the Twilight Zone Through High School Soccer

For those of you who have read my previous articles and checked out my bio, thank you.

But you'd also see that I cover high school sports in the West Bend, Wisconsin area.

That's where the journey to 'weird town' begins.

On April 9, 2010, I was at Slinger High School covering the Slinger Owls' girls soccer team play the Plymouth Panthers in a non-conference game.

After the 80 minutes of regulation, the score was tied 0-0, but instead of calling it a tie to avoid injuries and be done with, the two teams continued to play.

Two ten-minute overtime periods gone by, with the chill in the Wisconsin April air get crisper with each passing minute, only to have the scoreboard read 0-0 after 100 minutes of just girls kicking a ball around.

That's not the freaky-deaky part though.

Ok, you ready for this.

Back on April 9, 2009, I was at Slinger High School watching the girls soccer team play a game against the Milwaukee Pius XI Lady Popes.

Sounds kind of familiar, right?

The two teams played the 80 minutes of regulation to a scoreless tie, and instead of calling it a game, seeing as how it was yet another non-conference game, both teams proceeded to play.

One overtime period went by, and I knew that I had witnessed this before.

After the double overtime in 2010, all I could think about on the drive back to the office was how I had watched two soccer games end in a double overtime scoreless tie, but was unsure of the exact date in 2009.

It wasn't until I checked my archived stories, that I found myself in the twilight zone.

One year to the day, I witnessed two games with the exact same outcome, in the exact same weather, at the exact same location.

It was after the 2009 game that I expressed my hatred for soccer, even more so than I already had.

100 minutes of soccer played and not one goal was scored. Well, now it's been 200 minutes of soccer and I've seen nothing but zeroes on the scoreboard.

It's been one full year and I've wound up in the exact same place in my feelings for 'football.'

I hope this isn't a growing trend, because if it is, I'm staying home on April 9, 2011.