Would you believe?

It dawned on my yesterday that I know just how to complete SB’s Pop Warner career scrapbook that my mom has been putting together with pictures. A thought that his been on my mind as this season winds down. Which it is. And I am sad. Because it’s been an amazing run. 6 seasons. 5 conference championships. Playing deep into November 3 years in a row now. Some personally awesome games for him. Some amazingly gut wrenching victories and losses over the years when the team showed so much heart. Lifetime friendships formed.

And I realized – hey, I’ve been writing about it right here since 2006! That was his 3rd year playing. I’ve got 4 seasons in here! Some were covered more closely than others (I have no idea why I haven’t kept up with game by game write ups this year but really this season was the least documented I think). That snapshot up there is from the very first post that I tagged as Pop Warner. July 31, 2006. Check it out! Look at that 10 year old face and those ugly tile floors that I still had!!

I will spend some time over the winter break going through all the posts, sprucing them up a bit and then printing them out to create a story book go along with the scrapbook.

I dug around some last night looking through the ones with the Pop Warner tag and revisited the end of the 2006 season when my participation in my third 3-Day walk crashed into the Chocolate Bowl weekend.  Then 2007 when we were first introduced to the concept of the Pop Warner Super Bowl held in Orlando each year for those teams that qualify (and we fell one game short). Thoughts of Florida dominated my days leading into that final game when we ran into the Tustin buzzsaw of a team that handed us final season losses in 07 & 08. those Orange County teams are the cream of the crop in our area for sure.

And yeah, it’s getting close again this year. Though we have to face the OC team THIS weekend instead of in the Wescon Final. So even though I have slight glimmer of Florida in my eye, we are still two games away. And the one in front of them tomorrow is the real challenge. Not the same Tustin team from the two years prior – a different one, Canyon Hills, but no easier for sure.

So we stand on the precipice of yet another game when a loss means the end of Pop Warner for us, and a victory buys us another week.

3pm PST Saturday – everyone please – cross your fingers for another week!!!!!!!