Fall Football 2019

Tonight, August 28th was the night for football tryouts for the 5th and 6th graders.  It was yet another unbelievably beautiful summer day with very low humidity and temps in the mid 70's (all the while during one of the "hottest summers on record, EVAH!!!, if you watch mainstream news).

They broke the boys up into 6 groups as there will be 6 teams in the league.  There was to be only 5 teams until they had enough late sign-ups this week to support the 6th!

They rotated thru drills by group and were graded as they went.  They were not told their grades but all of the info will be compiled and I'm guessing, entered into a computer, and that there's an algorithm to "draft" the teams, in the hopes to keep them somewhat even.  

The caveat to that being that most, if not all, of the teams are coached by parents of kids playing in the league.  So it's obvious that the kids of those parents are going to be on their parents team and as we have requested in the past, our kiddo to be on a specific team due to that parent coach and co-transporting them to practices and such.

No matter, the boys are 10, 11 & 12 years old so there's no matter too important here. Just play the game, do the best you can and most of all, have fun!!

Soccer in the foreground,  football in the background...  A guy who's had back surgery can't help but notice the lack of places to sit.  And don't tell me that there's lots of grass to sit on!  They'll be hauling my crippled arse out in an ambulance if I sit on the ground for more than about 3 minutes.

So what's a fella to do when there's no seating?  Go for a walk, of course!  I walked around the practice field a good number of times while keeping an eye out for Caleb's bright orangish/pinkish shorts!  This is him running the square cones.

Finishing the same... that's him on the left of the picture.

Caleb just above middle center of the pic.  This drill was sprint down to the first cone, turn and catch, throw the ball back, drop the second cone, turn and catch, drop to the third cone, turn and catch.  Calebber caught the balls on cones 1 & 2, dropping 3.   I watched a LOT of this drill from many of the groups.  I would say that about 15% of the kids caught all three balls, about 80% caught 2, and about 5% caught 1 or less.

Wide shot where I walked over to the fields to take a wide shot of the "going's on".

3-cone drill.  

Standing long jump #1.

Standing long jump #2.

Push the tackle back drill.

This was taken around 8:25pm, which is a time I figured that we would at least be on the way home, if not home and comfy!  But those little dots way the crap out there are football players and of those little dots, one of them is Caleb!

In an inevitable mercy kill, they brought the rest of the boys in so they can now wait in line at the shed (on the left of the pic) to get measured for shoulder pads and helmets...  Sweet. Mother. Mary.

And so went the night.  Other than my back bothering me mightily, it was kind of fun to watch!