Today was a three game day and I am proud to say we took two out of three. The one loss is perhaps the one I never saw coming. My middle son lost his first flag football game of the season and perhaps his 3rd all time. This was largely a result of being outclassed by the opposing team. They were bigger, faster, stronger, and rougher than my 7 boys and it showed. The truth of the matter is I have maybe 5 kids who are legitimately competitive and two who haven’t matured enough to be competitive. Of those 5, only 3 can be counted on for both sides of the ball. That core wasn’t strong enough to overcome the athletic advantage of the other team along with bad reffing. I’m not one to complain about the refs all the time, but this guy let the kids score with flag guarding. He let em tackle my smaller kids and continued to grant them opportunities we did not receive.
In the end, the game came down to my kids being more interested in arguing than in playing. They all wanted the ball every play, but nobody wanted to listen. We blew a few possessions almost solely because I failed to maintain control of the offense. On defense we just did not do a great job tackling kids who can cut and weave. This is something I need to work on in practice–once I figure out how.
8-9 is going well. We played an incredibly tough Niner’s team and won 20-18. Good ball movement, but I need to get the ball in the hands of a couple more kids in order to feel good about how we spread it around. Kids are getting the routes and the offensive sets. This team is going to be great.