You guys can rejoice that this will be the last football entry. :)

Today was round one of the post season tourament and we got beat…actually we got beat up more than beat. I swear the other team’s strategy was to play as dirty as possible and take the penalties because eventually the refs wouldn’t see one and they’d score – because that’s exactly how the game went.

At one point they had 8 consecutive penalties. Offensive line kids would be tackling our defense. Defensive kids would be hitting our offensive kids as they tried to return to the huddle. Literally the other team had just 6 or 7 plays the entire game that weren’t a penalty call or a touchdown. Our kids were leaving the game hurt left and right.

I’m not saying I’m against physical football. If anything that exactly what our coaches tried to instill in our kids – the first rule of the team was, “Play hard” – but there’s a difference between playing hard and playing rough (borderline dirty).

The scoreboard (no photo this time) was this tiny little thing they perched on top of a 55 gallon garbage drum and the clock on it didn’t work correctly. The whole thing was just ‘off’ – like we were set up for a mugging.

We lost 20-0.

Mixed feelings. To be honest, it’s nice to have that commitment over with. Preseason practices were two hours long, five nights a week. Once school started it became three nights a week plus the weekend game. We had to volunteer time too.

On the other hand, it’s going to be weird to not have that commitment hanging over me anymore. Come Monday evening, I got nothing going on.

Football was a pretty big part of our lives for the past few months. It was fun. My son loved it and made a lot of new friends. The learning experience was awesome and the phyiscal aspect of it has helped him in visible ways. He’s already talking about doing it again next year.