#17

When Melanee was a freshman, she tried out for the varsity soccer team.  The year before the Pleasant Valley High soccer team was reallllllllly good, but they lost a lot of seniors.  There was no JV team, so all the people trying out were trying for the spots left vacant by the seniors.  About 2 weeks into "tryouts" there is a BIG pre season tournament in Stockton.  By this time the coach had not concluded his tryouts or selected his team, but he needs a tournament team and needs to pass out the uniforms to the girls who will be playing in the tournament.  Of all the kids trying out he picked 5 freshmen to go to Stockton--- Melanee, Jamie, J-Lo, Summer, and Brittney.  (Mel, did Brittney go?)  Anyway, the coach had the girls pick their numbers, but planned to pass out the uniforms at the parent meeting later that night.  When I went to the meeting, she had told me that I would be picking up #8, but while I was at the meeting, the coach informed me that after that practice that day a player who was not planning on playing (a senior) decided to play and she was #8 last season, so he gave Melanee #16.   #16 was bag full of the jerseys, shorts, socks, sweats, jacket, etc......they were all size SMALL and they were DIRTY, stained, stinky, ripped, and just plain DISGUSTING.  (the previous player had NOT washed the uniform after the last game and had NEVER taken care of any of the stuff, I don't even think the socks MATCHED and she had worn the bottoms of the socks OUT).  You also need to know that when Melanee was a freshman, she was VERY modest.  All of her shorts were long basketball shorts.  Her t shirts were not tight.  She wore clothes to be comfortable, not necessarily to look good.  She did NOT like SHORT shorts, and would NOT have been comfortable in a TIGHT uniform.  I doubt she would have ever worn the sweats because they would have been too short and the arms of the sweat jacket would have been too short.  She would have HATED it.  The big, thick winter coat wouldn't have gone around her shoulders.  I was even worried that she wouldn't play as well if she would have had a too tight uniform.  So, I asked the coach if I could switch it with a size Medium uniform.  Since there were only 18 players going to the tournament and 22 uniforms, he said, "Sure".  So I went over to the bags that were still sitting there and looked through them.....only #17 was medium sized, (and CLEAN), so I took that one.

 HAHA.  Not the story you were expecting, huh?  17 doesn't mean anything!  #17 is not really a number with any special meaning.  It's not the number of a favorite athlete.  It's not the number she wore from her youth years (those shirts only go up to 13).  It was just a nice uniform in the correct size. 

A funny thing about the "cleanliness" issue was that one of the previous #17s had left a black permanent marker next to the shorts, so on the side of the shorts, on the white area was a big black ink mark.  Only on Melanee's shorts. 

The girl who ended up getting #16, her mom bought all kinds of stain eliminators and special oxyclean and did all kinds of treatments to get out the stains of #16 and she had to buy new socks. 

No, the number was not picked by Melanee.  No, I don't even think she liked it.  She was definitely disappointed when I came home without the #8 bag.  But now that she has been #17 for 7 years including Butte United, it is HER number and it is an AWESOME number.  I really love it.