All wet

You have to live along the Colorado Front Range to understand that weather that is 'routine' along the East Coast (namely, steady rain) or in Cascadia doesn't happen too often here.  Well Mother Nature conspired to do just that, give us a light to moderate rain right after my Fr/Soph HS game started this past Wednesday.  Multiple weird things happened.

• It started raining 5 min after we started the game.  Rapidly became moderate in nature, then alternated between light and moderate.  Of course, I had my trusty garbage bag (we all do, right?) INSIDE my gear bag.  Lots of good that did.  Managed to get a chance to get it OVER my gear bag during a break after a goal.
• I learned how difficult it is to concentrate during a steady rain with mid 50s temperature.  I permitted a sub on a corner kick for the DEFENDING team when the ATTACKING team was NOT subbing.  OOPS.  In HS the defending team can only sub on a CK or throw in when the team with the ball subs.  Fortunately the attacking team coach laughed it off in an exchange for a promise to let HIS team do that.
• This being frosh/soph, one player decided to stick his arms INSIDE his shirt on an attack.  To keep them warm.  Actually had a pretty impressive run until his pass went awry.  Nothing in the Rules/Laws against that, although clearly somewhat dangerous.
• Late in the game, one team subbed their keeper because a) his gloves were soaked and b) he couldn't feel his hands.  Their keeper had a penny on since his shirt was close in color to the home team shirt.  The coach (and I) told the replacement keeper "put the penny on."  So what does he do?  Takes off his game shirt and just wears the penny.  That what he thought we said! Oy.  I just had to grin.  10 min left, 5-2 game, Frosh/Soph level, steady rain, and his game shirt was soaked anyway, I let it go.  His teammates jeer "dude, you're lucky the ref has a sense of humor."

The amazing thing is, although the game had a lot of goofy elements, the players kept it clean.  We had 4 fouls total in the game (outside of numerous offside calls).  A combination of a wet field with U-16 boys could've resulted in a lot of fouls and cards, but these players almost seemed to sense that they should just have fun since they don't play in the rain too often here, and they did.

I'm still drying off from the experience.