A Great Day on the Gridiron

We started football practice two weeks ago and our first jamboree/scrimmage is scheduled for Sunday.  Each time we enter the football season one of my favorite stories comes to mind. 

When the boys were 8 (they are now 12) we played a team with a newly developed football program. Not only had they not won a game in the past two seasons, they also hadn’t scored.  In this, the last game of their second season, we got up on them quickly and nearing the end of the half were winning by a couple of scores.  After a kickoff they had the ball near midfield with two minutes on the clock.  They put a few nice runs together and got to our 30 yard line, the only problem was that they were out of timeouts and had no way to stop the clock.  In order to assist them in getting into the end zone we began calling our timeouts in order to extend the clock, but due to a few miscues they were unable to score before the half.

At the end of the second half we were up by three scores and the same scenario presented itself.  We again begin using our timeouts and the other team was moving the ball nicely and made it to our ten yard line.  With time about to expire, it was apparent by their formation (they’d run this multiple times already) that they were going to run a quarterback bootleg to our right.  I then made a coaching ‘mistake’ and slanted my players to the left and the other team scored.  As their quarterback crossed the goal line I glanced at the opposing sideline and saw the coaches and parents erupt over their team’s first-ever score.

The funny, or perhaps nice, thing is that only one of the referees and one of the opposing coaches knew what we had done.  The jubilation displayed by the kids was fantastic, and after the game this team had a year-end pizza party with speeches by the coaches and some players.  While my team made their hour-long drive home I stuck around, stayed in the background, and listened. My heart swelled.

Back to their touchdown run - as I watched their celebration our head coach walked past me and said, ‘Now maybe some of those kids will come back next year,’ as he loves the game more than he loves our team – as it should be.