The WA football team splits into four smaller teams over the summer for some friendly competition. They have all sorts of contests, but the most recent one was definitely the most entertaining…as well as closest to our house. The kids and I took our seats to watch the show.

The guys competed in a softball tournament, but not any ordinary softball tournament. Each team was to come up with a theme, for their theme and costume were judged in addition to their performance on the field. The coach gathered the superheroes, hunters, landscapers, and Polish Christmas guys together to lay out the ground rules.

One of Derek’s teammates is Polish–as in his parents are from Poland–so they decided to build on that theme.

Derek asked if I could put together some lederhosen. Relishing the challenge, I found some suspenders and sewed a chest piece to them, cut some pants short, then scrounged the rest of the items. It was just good enough to be recognizable.

After the games, Derek put on another kid’s costume bear head and walked around with it.

Here he stood before me, sharing the story of how he split his ‘lederhosen’ pants on the game-winning play of his final game.