Who are we? Oh yes, still Falcons!

Ah, THIS is what Saturdays are supposed to be!

When I first arrived I had no idea where SportsBoy was. He’s no longer #55. Now his practice jersey is #81 and his game jersey is an #88. I had no idea which ones they were going to wear today. Remember, this is high school so I haven’t been haunting the sidelines watching practices the last two weeks. Heck, the first time I shook hands and introduced myself to the head coach was today after the game and only because we ran into him at Oggis where we went to have lunch! So I had no clue when I snapped this picture if he was even in it (again, this space cadet did not bring a good camera!). However, I’ve since realized I did sort of snap him in action:

Yes, as you can tell by the uniforms and the field – we are still the Falcons.

SB had been not sure how much he would play. In the practices he’d never made the #1 slot in either wide receiver or running back. He kept getting stuck behind the same guy! He lamented what he thought was a bias towards height & size which we had anticipated could be an issue. Yet he insisted he and only one other guy could actually reliably catch passes so we just hoped that would all work out. I told him to just keep working hard, being positive, offering to help out in any way before & after practices which he has done. Then I reminded him how different practices are from games & that was where he could prove himself.

Parents say stuff like that to kids all the time. And we mean it. But we always have this knowledge that we don’t control everything and no matter what, our kids could still end up disappointed.

Well….

This was just an intra squad scrimmage mind you.

Just played on one half of the field.

He played in EVERY series. 3 times on offense, once on defense.

Midway through the game (before he had any significant plays), I thought I saw his pop warner coach. Up a little away from where I was sitting, but I could suspected it was him.

Then SB had his first carry as a running back. And he did his usual dodging and weaving and slashing to gain about 15 yards breaking two tackles along the way. I clapped quietly, but hey, it was an intrasquad scrimmage so it was not the place for a mom to go crazy cheering for her kid, right? So I was well behaved. Then I heard it “Way to go XXXXXX!” (where the x’s represent our last name – pronounced *correctly*!). I looked to my right – and yep – it was our coach all right. Cheering louder for my boy than I was.

Next play he catches a pass and runs for a touchdown. Now I do stand and cheer. Now coach and a couple of other dads with him holler even more. Now I’m grinning ear to ear and hoping that he could hear it down there. He says he did, but that he had no idea it was his coach. Two more scrambling plays and now I am believing that hey – he really DID prove himself in a game situation to a whole new set of coaches didn’t he?

3 dads came up to ma after to game to say how much they loved my kid. Coach finally walked over and confirmed that he may have been a little excited to see “his” boys playing so well. (Two other former players of his are on the team, one at QB, and one at the other WR position. The other WR had a touchdown in the 1st series). Unfortunately he had to leave before I could get SB’s attention to come back out to the field. But we should see him next weekend when pop warner starts.

He promised us in a season ending email that he would cheer loudly for SB during his HS career. I should have known he would not disappoint us.

I also shoulda known my kid would indeed, show those coaches what he is made of when game time comes around.