Snack smackdown brewing on soccer fields

Family Phil is involved in an “arms war” that’s not of his choosing. Family Phil? He’s the stay-at-home Coeur d’Alene father with the popular blog A Family Runs Through It. In a post last week, he wrote of an escalating “arms war” that focuses on snacks after youth soccer games. Remember when you were happy if your mother handed you a pop from the family cooler after a ball game? And the drinking fountain at the local park worked? Well, the after-game scene is much different today. The build-up has been rapid, according to Phil, whose son is finishing his fifth season of soccer play. In the beginning, Family Phil said it was easy to figure out how many drinks and treats were necessary when it was his turn to provide them. He simply counted the players on the team and brought a drink and granola bar for each. Then, some parents began bringing a juice and two snacks for each player – a healthy one and a sugary one, sealed in Ziploc bags. The players became persnickety as their choices expanded. Posts Phil: “They’ve become such snack connoisseurs, immediately passing judgment on which parents are the coolest based on the size and quality of their Bag o’ Snacks.” Matters continued to change for the worse when one parent decided she should bring snacks for the players’ younger siblings, too, so no one would feel left out. On the positive side, Family Phil says, there’s a lot less whining from the sidelines because the younger children are “focused on the possibility of receiving a treat after the game.” In fact, Phil sees a silver lining to all of this: Maybe there’d be less whining among the parents during games, if someone brought snacks and/or drinks for them, too. Chocolate crème frappuccinos, anyone?