3 Football Games in 44 hours!

Whew!

Thursday, Ryan's 7th grade team played football in Yuma. I thought he played really well. He ran down the field and had a solo tackle on a kid that was trying to return a punt. It was a great tackle. He landed on his knee wrong and I think it kinda spooked him. He sat out the next series, but then played the rest of the game. In 7th grade they don't pass the ball very much - but when they do it's a good idea to pass to Ryan! He caught a pass for what would have been about a 20 yard gain - had it not been called back on a holding penalty. Ryan has a lot of potential. He is a natural athlete. I think he is a little bit confused because all of his life I've been telling him to "be nice" and "don't hit"...and now I'm telling him to go out there and "HIT SOMEBODY!" Poor guy is getting mixed messages. :-/

Even though the score ended up 12-0 in Yuma's favor, I was very proud of Ryan and his teammates. They have a long way to go...but they are getting better every day. They will play Wray at home (yay!) on Tuesday.

My camera doesn't zoom very far - and I get really into the games - so most of the pictures I take are of the boys on the sidelines before the game starts. Tyler is the one in the first picture with his belt hanging down on his behind. In the second picture Ryan is #83.

The varsity Cougars traveled to Lamar for their season opener on Friday night. It was one of the best high school football games I've ever seen! Ok...the first half wasn't great. We scored first, then Lamar scored on a 70 pass then we got the ball, fumbled, and Lamar scored again. Yikes! And then they scored again! It was 20-7 at halftime. I don't know what Coach Higgs said to the boys at halftime, but I would like to have a copy of his speech. The boys that went into that locker room were not the same boys that came out to play the second half. Lamar did not score in the second half. In fact, our defense did not allow Lamar to get ANY first downs in the second half. We scored three times for a final score of 28-20! The determination in our Cougars was amazing! It was so fun! The fans, the boys on the sidelines, the coaches, everyone was so pumped up! It was a GREAT way to start the season! Tyler plays a lot of special teams on varsity - but on JV - he plays A LOT of everything! ...which leads me to today's game against the Lamar JV. It probably helped that we were still on a high from last night, and that we were the home team, but talk about a great game! Our JV stuck it to them 42-0!!! This was the first game that Tyler has played much (if any) on defense. He did AWESOME! He broke through the line and in the process of almost sacking the quarterback, caused him to throw an interception that resulted in a touchdown for us! I've never seen Tyler that aggressive in his life! He was in on almost every play, he did such a great job! On offense he really helped open some holes for the running backs. It's amazing what a difference a year has made to him. He really manned up and I can't wait to see what the rest of the year has in store for him! When he got in the car, I said, "That was your best game EVER!" and he said, "you mean YET!"

This week we have HOME games with Wray. Ryan on Tuesday and Tyler on Friday. (I love home games!) :-)