If you're at all involved in the WA sporting community, you'll know how important this time of year is with the 'Big Dance' on for a lot of different codes.
Netballers and footballers alike gear up for their grand finals, while their coaches, managers, umpires and officials psych themselves up for all the emotions and politics that only something like a division six under-15's premiership can bring out.
And while I love sport and all the emotion that comes with it, grand final weekend always seems to amplify the reasons why more and more kids are starting to turn away from the games they love.
I have witnessed parents call under-13's umpires every name in the book, spectators at each other's throats and the win-at-all-costs mentality poison kids to the point of punch-ups on court.
While netball is notorious for its competitiveness, I can't help but cringe as I see another mum drag her girl up to the match office to complain about an "incompetent" 12-year-old umpire in a green learner shirt.
The girls I coach are in their mid-teens, and before they took the court on Saturday I told them over and over again: they had each earned their time in the big dance and I was extremely proud of them.
Because, just to reiterate, they're kids. This is not the Olympics.
They were up against their arch rivals - a lovely group of girls who were equally talented and competitive. I have no doubt if it was left up to them, both teams would have had a great game with fantastic sportsmanship and a nail-biting finish.
But that's not the nature of kids sport anymore.
Instead, a player from the other team was benched after the first quarter in favour of a division one player from the age grade below - who was taller than all my defenders and shot the lights out.
It was later confirmed the secret weapon had been subbed in despite never having played a game with that particular team before.
The girl who had played with the team all season sat on the bench and watched as her teammates celebrated their grand final win without her.
What the coach had done was completely legal and there was no doubt they had won fair-and-square with a mammoth effort from their entire side, but I still felt for the team's regular shooter who spent her grand final sitting on the bench.
As the parents around me loudly discussed how they would have been furious with me if I had have done the same thing to their child, I could only reinforce that that was how kids sport is nowadays.
It's cut-throat, and if I thought I could have gotten away with pulling in the entire under-15's division one side and benching all my players, there was a definite argument I should have done so.
Many netball clubs even have a rule when players hit their teenage years: players are only guaranteed to play a single quarter in the finals series.
Not coincidentally, researchers have nicknamed the early teenage years as "the drop-out zone" for sports.
While I understand this one-quarter rule is designed to foster competitiveness, I'm not sure I agree with benching a player in favour of someone who didn't take the whole 18 round ride with them.
Because when I was a kid, sport was about trying as hard as possible, and support and acceptance if it didn't work out.
At the end of the day, the girls were playing for a piece of metal that gets stuck in the back of a wardrobe and collects dust.
After a few tears, my girls chatted about their wind-up, parties they were going to with each other later on and how best they could stay in touch now the season was all over.
I will always be far more proud of that than I am of some stupid division four medal.
