The second game of the season was another rough one for the Cougars this past Friday. They are playing hobbled without their starting quarterback and even their second string leader missed practice all week as he was also nursing injuries. Still, they went out and gave it a good fight. I am happy to say that Mijo had another good week at center without a bad snap, which is starting me to make me feel at ease because it was almost expected in about every other game last year that there would be a couple of bad snaps that would end up flying over the head of the QB.
The first quarter was decent, the Coogs looked good and even moved the ball a bit, but then punted a very short kick that put Gonzalez on their side of the field, but our boys stopped them and got the ball back by stripping the ball and causing a fumble. They moved the ball some more but ended up giving up the ball. It took most of the quarter, but Gonzalez eventually scored. Once this happened, it seemed to cascade and the floodgates opened. I don't know if the guys loose heart or they just panic, but the other team just kept scoring on mistakes and missed tackles. It doesn't help that our offense can't seem to move the ball, but when neither quarterback is in practice taking snaps and you see the coach running the position during practice, it just seems that much harder to expect the offense to find points on game day.
It is what it is, they lost 49-8, which is a bad sounding score, but they did play better than that, if not for a handful of plays that just get away from them. I like to focus on the positives and our son is playing very good, he is not making things worse by hiking the ball erratically, he is handling himself very well, again he had probably the largest defender, a very big nose guard in front of him most of the game and he handled him pretty well, all game long. Along with that, he also went in and played defensive tackle the whole second half of the game and was in on a few tackles so I know our son is playing his heart out.
We had a small incident where one of the parents, or a possible family member of one of the players started getting negative once the game was getting out of hand in the app where we all communicate with the coaching staff and students, it has been a good tool to keep us all in close contact, but I guess this person decided to take his frustrations out here. Wife quickly addressed him with a stern "Mr. xxxx, we are not here to criticize the students or their performance, they are playing as hard as they can and our job is to love and support them, not make them feel shame..." I am paraphrasing, but luckily, one of the coaches must have seen the comments and removed them before the game ended. We can't blame the kids, they show up for practice, they work very hard, it just takes time to do what the coach wants. Even our son had said after the first game "I know the coach wants to turn the team around and become playoff worthy, but that takes years to turn things around, it doesn't just happen in one season."
I have learned a lot as a parent of an athlete too. I used to think when I was in high school poorly of our football team, they did not win many games and attributed it to "lazy and poor attitudes from the players", but I see these boys before and after practices, and games. They really work hard, they hobble off the field with their assorted injuries and bruises, even our son was mildly hurt this week. He was hit on the elbow with a helmet from his own teammate on a play and he lost feeling in it for a few seconds. He said he went to get up off the ground and there was no power in the arm to push himself off the ground. Luckily, it lasted only a few seconds. Still, even with the possibility of injury on any play, these kids are out there trying for the love of the game and support of their teammates. I respect this because they don't have to put themselves through the beatings they get every week.
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