Sean’s football team had their season opener today. They went down to defeat by a score of 27 – 12. It looks like another long year for the football team. Last year, they didnt win a single game all year. They did beat one team in a scrimmage earlier this Summer, so there is hope. The problem is that we are out in the middle of nowhere country folk and the teams we play are from bigger towns. Still, it’s great for the kids and they have a ball playing THE game.
Sean played linebacker the whole game on defense and was amongst the leading tacklers. He and one other kid on the team had most of the tackles. I would say he played the position a bit tentative as it was his first game as a linebacker. Last year he played defensive line. He wasnt happy with his performance, but I thought it was good.
They had told him he would play fullback on offense. However, during the practices during the week, they get about 14 or 15 kids to show up. At the game today, they had 21. These kids are still at the age where rules, correctly so in my opinion, say you have to play everyone. So, he didnt play offense at all during the first half.
In the second half, they put him in as a tight end and he played the whole half. He had a couple of good pancake blocks and had the block that sprung one 60 yard touchdown run and another 40 yard run. One play, the coach mistakenly had him be the quarterback. He took the snap, looked around and was promptly sacked for a loss.
I dont want to criticize the coaches because they are spending their valuable time coaching the kids and I am not, but it was mass anarchy out there today. Some kids had no idea where to go on plays. All six timeouts were used to place kids by hand in their positions for the play. There is no excuse for that at this age. Also, the offensive coach came up with this idea where he had the line and wide receivers go get in position and the he would tell the QB and RBs what the play was. That doesnt make any sense at all to me. Also, early in the first quarter, we had a fourth down at our own 10 and the coaches went for it??? That gave them a free touchdown. They need to spend a week and just do fundamentals.
Still, the kids had fun and played pretty well. They gave up a long kick return TD and two long TD runs. Otherwise, it was a hard fought game.
Oh, and Sean did the punting today and averaged 25+ yards (from the line of scrimmage)per punt. Thats pretty good for a 10 year old I think – but then again, I am a Dad.
The team gets another chance next week.
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