"Are you coming back, Coach?"

It was an innocent question: "Are you coming back, Coach?" The inquiry coming from a returning fast-pitch softball player for next season, following our final, regular-season middle school game of the year yesterday -- an 11-2 loss to the defending league champions. I smiled at the 7th-grader, put my arm around her and told her I thought I'd be back. With the current climate (the financial one, that is), involving middle school sports in the city of Tucson and its surrounding areas, nobody knows for sure if there will be such a thing in the future. It looks like the middle school fields -- in and around the city -- could become parking lots in the years to come, or maybe the fields will eventually be leased out to the many Club Teams, which are popping up around town, giving the parents whom can afford such an undertaking an option for their young one to participate in sports like baseball, softball, track and field, and soccer. Where does that leave the middle school player -- and the parent who cannot afford the Club Scene? No where, I guess. What a shame.