I’m the assistant coach for Charlie’s street hockey team. The "blue team." For the first few weeks of the season, we looked like the Bad News Bears. We were scoring in our own goal, holding hockey sticks the wrong way and one kid may have yelled "touchdown!" when we scored our first goal. We were losing games by large margins and watching our opponents celebrate often.

Winning is nice of course but it is so much sweeter after you’ve tasted a fair share of defeat. Maybe the same can be said for managing diabetes. We measure our success by how far we’ve come.

On this day, the blue team had enough of losing. They played with a ton of heart, ending their losing streak with a giant 7-2 victory.

No one works harder than the kid with diabetes. That’s not bias. Anyone watching would agree. Charlie is so driven; so determined to win. The games occur soon after he eats dinner, so he generally is playing most of the game with an elevated blood sugar. No one would know by the way he plays. Charlie scored two goals and was a hockey monster.

"Wow! What a goal," I overheard from one of the dads, after Charlie made a move to the middle and fired a shot past the goalie before plunging to his knees.

When the horn sounded, there was much celebrating from our side. The sweaty-headed kids were howling and the moms and dads were "whoo! whooing!" with a little extra "whoo! whoo!"

Even diabetes got caught up in the moment, cooperating with a welcoming post-game blood sugar of 137.

I felt the eyes of one of the dads on me while I tested Charlie.

"Charlie is some player," he said, while watching me pop open the test strips.

"And to have to deal with that," he continued.

I don’t know if he knew what THAT was, but it was appreciated regardless. On this team, it’s not common knowledge that Charlie has diabetes.

"Thanks," I said. "Yeah, he’s a tough kid."

On the drive home, Charlie marveled at a lavender sunset over a used car lot.

And I marveled at Charlie.

Some days are perfect.