Lord Gonchar

If you read my last football post, you know we were waiting to see how many 3rd graders were going to play and how it would affect the team breakdown.

So Monday we head out to the first day of practice and obviously the buzz was still all about how many kids and teams and such. Basically it was too much rumor and gossip to really know. To make things worse, the new kids coming in don’t get picked to a team until mid-week. They just float around practicing with all the teams getting a feel for the flow and giving the coaches a chance to see them play a little. The actual drafting of the kids happens on Wednesday of the first week. So no one was saying anything official and they were practicing as three teams. All that was official at this point was that it would be the white team that was broken up and absorbed into the black and orange teams based on having the fewest players. For the record, my son is on the orange team. They actually had 11 boys return/move up from bantam which was a pretty nice number.

So after a million questions and no answers, about 20 minutes into practice they round up all the 3rd grade parents for a small meeting. Turns out board members from our teams and also a rep from the entire conference were there to try to sort this out.

Basically the conference has no set minimum number of players. As long as you have enough for a team, you can play. Some cities in the conference can only ghet enough kids to form one team on any given grade level and get by with just enough kids. Heck we’ve played teams in the past where you’ll see just one or two kids on the bench at any given time. I always assumed they had no-shows or injuries or illness or whatever, but it turns out some places have that low of participation. We’re kind of lucky to have enough kids to form three separate teams at each grade level. So as far as the conference was concerned, they didn’t care as long as we have 11 kids on the field to play each weekend. Naturally they preferred larger teams, but couldn’t really do much if you ran smaller.

Our board members (basically our leaders who report to the conference) originally set the minimum at 16 – which is why we I mentioned 48 kids as the magic number in that previous post I made. Turns out that the actual final number was 45. We fell three short.

I’m filling in blanks here, but it seems to me that the coaches raised a little bit of a stink saying they still wanted to go with three teams of 15 kids, but the board (who technically has the final say) wanted to go with two teams of 22 and 23 kids.

So they pulled all the parents aside and explained the situation a little. Basically the board had seriosu concerns about cutting it that close. You need 11 kids on the field at all times to play football. With even a full roster of 15, that’s a lot of playing. Lose one or two kids for a game (and it happens – vacation, illness, injury, kids quit, just unable to show up one week) and you could be forcing kids to essentially play an entire game of football on both sides of the ball. They talked about horror stories of kids on the field crying and still having to play and stuff like that. If was obvious that they wanted us to merge to two teams. They also made it clear that the coaches felt they could run with smaller squads and three teams. They never said they’d prefer to (even though I’m 99% sure they did), just that they aid they could. So they basically put it out to us – the parent. We pay for this, we bring our kids every night and travel to games, it’s our kids’ experience. They wanted to know what we wanted. Basically it turned into an open forum with everyone expressing both different pros and cons. After a little discussion it was down to an old fashioned show of hands. By my estimation is was roughly 2-to-1 in favor of the smaller teams.

The board members told us they’d have to present it to the full board and to the conference, but they’d let them know what we had to say.

So at this point, the coaches wanted to run three teams, the majority of parents wanted to run three teams, but the board would have preferred two larger squads.

We heard nothing.

Tuesday practice came and went with the same three-team set-up and new player rotation as Monday.

Wednesday rolls around and they gather everyone and have a little huddle. They then break specific kids off into the three teams. The kids practiced with their team the whole 2 hours. I also noticed that we had 4 of the new kids. (4 new kids + 11 returning = 15 kids)

Near the end of practice the head coach ducked out for a meeting. Basically to confirm that it would be three teams and that these picks would stick.

Practice ended with the usual group breakdown (the boys do this whole chant/cheer “Who are we? Beavers! When do we quit? Never!” and so on thingy at the end of every pactice) and then the coaches gathered all the parents around and announced that we were looking at the 2010 3rd grade orange team.

Nice!

I think it looks solid. We have an awesome core of returning players that were damn good last year and we got four of the better looking new kids as well. Lots of speed on the team. My son went from bottom-middle/upper-bottom in terms of speed dexterity on last years team to almost dead last on this years. However, he went from middle/upper-middle in terms of size and solidness on last years team to being one of the ‘thicker’ kids this year. Definitely in the top. So if he just realizes his size advantage and loses that hestitation to really hammer someone, he could be a serious monster for the team this season. Especially with just 15 kids on the roster. Hopefully, coach remembers how he really came into his own (dare I say, flourished a bit) once he moved him from D-line to middle linebacker late last season and puts him there again.

What? An LB without speed? Well, they way they play at this level, the middle backer is pretty much a glorified lineman. My little guy wasn’t quick enough on the line to shake his blocker most of the time when he was on the line. But from the standing position as a middle linebacker, the O-line is picking up our D-line and my little guy already has the upright advantage and just pushed through. Not much of a threat to quick plays around the outside, but a playmaker on slower plays and things coming up the middle.

But I digress, who knows how this season will play out. I love how much time the kids are getting with the coaches in practice and the numbers mean all the kids will get some seriously game time. This week is conditioning (no pads or contact, a lot of running. exercise and refreshing information). Next week we go to full pads and contact and that’s where we’ll start to see where the chips fall. I’m hoping he starts strong and doesn’t look back, because if something happens to make you hesitant (a bad hit, getting leveled, whatever) it takes a lot to lose that timidness and right now I think his best bet toward contributing and being a serious part of the team is to find that inner monster.

We’ll see.