We spent the weekend as a family down in Tucson for Hunter’s soccer tournament (his first traveling tournament since they were cancelled last spring) and we had a great time. He played four games in less than 24 hours and by the end they were exhausted, but they pulled out a second place tournament win.

Side note: We are a no Sunday soccer club which means we typically play in tournaments and are not able to compete in the Sunday final play. This tournament was accommodating and allowed us to play two games Friday night and two games Saturday in order to be considered for final play.

We had never been to Tucson and we were pleasantly surprised with the landscape. I think I was expecting it to look like our area and instead we found the city surrounded by foothills – which made for a beautiful backdrop for soccer. Throw some snow on those mountains and it looks like Utah…kind of!

One of the complexes we played games at had the most beautiful soccer fields we have every seen. It was a new facility and the grass was golf course quality.

This was our third COVID era tournament and Tucson had the strictest protocols out of all of them. We were allowed two spectators per player (luckily we had several players without spectators which is how we got our whole family to go) and boxes were painted on the field where two spectators could sit together. They had monitors making sure you stayed inside your box and kept a mask on. Fortunately, the players didn’t have to wear masks. They played, they hugged, they high fived…and then when they stepped off the field, they put their masks on. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but we were happy to follow the rules in order to let kids play.

Aside from watching soccer, we are good friends with one of Hunter’s teammates family which meant all the kids had friends to hang out with all weekend long – they were in heaven.

We were a little surprised to show up to our hotel 10pm Friday night to learn that they had cancelled our two rooms. We had booked through hotels.com and had a guaranteed booking and yet the hotel, without contacting us and without any reasonable explanation had cancelled the reservation.

The real kicker – they were now full. (They let us know that had we checked in earlier, we would have had no problems, but they gave our rooms away just two hours earlier. I have never witnessed something so crazy and they had no explanation for me. I had my confirmation and guaranteed rooms – and still nothing. Not what you want to deal with at 10pm. Probably won’t be using hotels.com anytime soon or the hotel chain that just couldn’t come up with a reason as to how they were cancelled).

We called hotel after hotel. Every hotel was full. Every single one. I’m not even sure how that’s possible unless they are limited occupancy due to COVID. We had four people searching hotels in the area trying to find space. We finally found one room, which was not enough space, but at 11pm we took it. Hunter stayed with a teammate at the original hotel. Some of us stayed in the room and some slept in the car! 🙂 It’s what family memories are made of, right? It’s a weekend we won’t soon forget, that’s for sure!

Awful sleeping conditions aside, we got to watch some good soccer.