I’m here watching the Falcons spank the Patriots in a Super Bowl I was not planning to watch. To be honest, I lost interest when the Giants lost to the Packers. I found a bit of it today when I was laying around and realized the game would start soon. Sure, it was really just an excuse to avoid working, but football is always my excuse. I believe that, given the chance, I would leave my job to call plays for an NFL team. Football is battlechess for gym rats. It is strategy mixed with raw violence and rife with storylines. Presently I’m living in such a storyline. I left the coaching staff of one son’s team to join the staff of another–a rival program.
The first question ought to be: Why the heck are your kids on rival teams? Because Friday Night Tykes has nothing on Maricopa. My mid-kid is part of a team that has been together for two seasons and barely missed out on the championship both times. The first time we just couldn’t overcome an injury to a starter on the first play of the game. My boy filled in nicely, but it exposed the fact that we hadn’t trained a backup at that position. We didn’t prepare for the possibility of injury. The second time we were prepared and we were better, but we honestly were not good enough to survive the changing momentum of a tough game against the team who eventually went to Florida for the National Championship (they finished 3rd). To make a long story ten-minute possible, that team reloaded and limited the roster to the top kids with no hope of playing time for the second string. While my youngest was an epic runner at the youngest level, he’s second string on this older team. So, he ends up on another team. My new team. See, storyline.
So now this new team is made up of a bunch of rookies and kids who were cast off from the main team and they are trying to pull it together in the twelve or so practices before we start the season–a season that may pit brother against brother.