Saturday, October 23, 2004

Football Frenzy.....

Saturday is football day. Somehow during the summer in my post pregnancy haze, I agreed to let Grant and Jacob play football. All things considered it has been a very positive experience for both of them. Jacob enjoys being part of a team, and Grant, well, Grant is a natural athlete.

Jay had meeting Saturday morning and the girls went to dance, so that left Brett and me to take on football duty. We were scheduled to play out in Felicity, a good 30 miles from here, down country winding roads. It took us almost 45 minutes to get to the fields. It was damp and cold, not the best weather for having toddler at the game, but after 2 trips to the concession stand, we got them settled. We thought we had an easy morning in front of us, both teams that we were playing hadn't won a game yet this year, boy were we wrong.....

Jacob's game was first. Jacob, who is usually only involved in a play if it is directly in front of him, actually had 7 tackles! It was unbelievable! The kids on his team were so excited to win for the second time this season. He was so excited at the end of the game when all his coaches kept grabbing his helmet and hugging his head telling him what a great game he had. He was BEAMING from ear to ear!

During Grant's game, Brett has been given the responsibility of filming the game for the coaches to review. Brett loves the job and takes it seriously, unfortunately that leaves me with Will, Sophie, Cade and Jacob Cade to keep track of while trying to watch Grant play.

Grant's game seemed to start out OK, but on our first possession the field was littered with the ref's flags. He made no signal to indicate the penalty he just moved the ball back 10 yards. We were penalized on each possession without so much as being told the penalty. To top it off, we ended up with 2 penalties called on our coach, one on the bench and one on the parents. To anyone watching it appeared that the refs were doing everything they could to hand Felicity their first win of the season. At the end of regulation, the game was scoreless. We were headed for overtime.

The first overtime begins with Felicity getting the ball on the 10 yardline. They have four attempts to score and miraclously we hold them off. The Bulldogs then get the ball on the 10 and get four attempts to score. Bet you can't guess what happened? We are penalized and the ball is moved back 10 yards. We don't manage to score. The second overtime begins with Felicity getting the ball on the 5 yard line. We manage to keep the team to neagative yardage. We get our shot to score. The ball in INTERCEPTED! So we head to the third overtime.

Felicity starts out with the ball on the 2.5 yard line. This possession they manage to score, but they don't make the 2 pt conversion. We get the ball back for one last try. One the first play we are penalized 10 yards, but we don't lose the down. We run three more plays and come close but don't manage to score. The other team starts CELEBRATING when it is pointed out rather LOUDLY that we still have one more possession. We line the boys up and they run an end around and SCORE! You should have heard the parent ROAR! We have a chance to win the game if we can score on the 2 pt conversion. They run the opposite direction, faking out the other team and trip over the goal line.......BULLDOGS WIN! BULLDOGS WIN! BULLDOGS WIN! The parents were hoopin' and hollerin' like we had just won the superbowl!

Grant's team is now 5 and 1, tied for second place in the league....we play the team we are tied with next weekend. Bet it will be another EXCITING GAME!

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