Being a big kindergartner this year meant that Logan could play football this fall for the first time! He was pretty excited about it even if he didn't (nor did I!) really know what he was getting into. We were lucky to get a pretty great couple of coaches who managed the fine balance of working the kids hard with out burning them out.
For the first couple of weeks they did two one and half hour practices a week. Once games started though, the coach dropped it down to one practice a week. Every Tuesday night I'd drive Logan out to the field behind the high school at 5:30, and while he'd practice, Gavin and I would settle in (okay, Gavin never really settles) and watch practice. Logan may not have always been the most focused player on the team during practice, but he always had a great time trying and playing with the other nine boys on his team, and I loved that he was out getting fresh air and exercise!
I really loved getting to watch Logan progress at each practice. He went from not being able to really skip or do high knees or run backwards to being really good at it! I also watched him go from being the kid who wandered aimlessly around the field to one that knew when to stand where and where to run to to get the ball. It was really a pretty awesome thing to get to watch!
Games were always on Saturday morning at eight o'clock in the morning! (Really, the early games were my only complaint about football, and it wasn't that bad!) We generally had to have Logan to the high school football field by 7:40 so that they had time to get flags on the boys and get them warmed up. It was pretty cool how they divided the field into three mini fields and ran three flag football games at a time.
We had six games total. They ran two twenty minute halves with a five minute break in between. No one keeps score for the kindergarten/first grade flag football games (well, maybe some super competitive parents of which I am not), so I'm not really sure how many - if any - games Logan's team "won," but they always seemed to do a pretty great job to me. At least a couple of times the team would score touchdowns, and they were pretty good about getting the flags off their opponents. Logan was so excited when he got his first flag at his first game!
The coaches were great about making sure all of the boys on the team got plenty of play time. Logan was almost always put on the field to play defense, and he played offense about half the time. He didn't score a touch down this year, but he did get to yank a few flags and spent quite a bit of time chasing after whoever had the ball.
At the end of the season, each player got a football trophy. They got to go up to the front of the field and stand in line waiting for their turn to be presented with their own little trophy. It was also pretty cool for them because one of the "real" football players from the high school team was handing out their trophies. I don't know if Logan was more excited about the trophy or the fact that he got to "fist bump" the real football player! In the end, he carried the trophy around for two days and showed it to everyone he met up with!
All in all, I'm glad that Logan got to experience being on a football team this fall. It was a great chance for him to get outside in the fresh air and run around, and it was a good way to introduce him more to the concept of team work and being on a team. He also got to meet some new kids, and, if you know Logan, you know that he was pretty excited about that, too! It was a fun experience for all of us, and I can't thank all the people that made it possible for Logan to participate in this program!
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