Baby A was chosen to coach the Junior girls' team against the Seniors on Friday. He was given this responsibility about two weeks ago, so he went about building a team from scratch. His first idea was to get a decent offensive and defensive coach, because he is a lineman on the football team, he knows about that, but he doesn't know enough about the roles of receivers and quarterbacks and this version of football is mostly about throwing the ball to different receivers or the quarterback taking off running, there are no linemen to worry about. He could only use other juniors and they had to be willing to jump in and help. He found one of the receivers willing to be his offensive coordinator and then he found a defensive coordinator. Once he had this set up, he went about recruiting the girls to be on his team. His first choice was from the track girls, he wanted speed, then the volleyball girls for their height, and finally some girls he knew who would show up and support him.
There was a lot of build up to this game, he needed whistles, at one point he wanted me to order shirts for all the girls, and then he needed a cooler full of Gatorades and waters for game day. The girls got their own shirts, saving me a good amount of money there, but I did provide him a couple of whistles and drinks. It was exciting to see him dealing with all the hassles and pains of lining this thing up, from the other team's coach calling him late at night to argue over the names the girls chose for their teams, to even discussing two days before that the game should be cancelled because the Senior girls had too much internal drama and they couldn't play together. All this melted away on game day and everything just fell into place at the right time for a really fun game on Friday afternoon.
Wife was even called by the booster club to volunteer and go sell drinks and snacks, which is not something I wanted to do, but there we were. We got there about an hour before the kids showed up after school, and we set up what needed to be set up, such as canopies and tables with drinks and we got some of the kids to go get ice to cool the drinks from inside the school.
The game was a bit clumsy, there was a lot of passing and a little receiving, but in the end, defense made the game. Both teams scored on defensive interceptions, the difference was that the seniors converted their PAT and the juniors did not. All in all, the game was a fun affair. Mom was able to meet a bunch of Baby A's friends from the football/wrestling teams, and for a spring day, the weather couldn't have been much better.
The juniors lost, Mijo was pissed, but in that he was taught another lesson which he got to experience from the other side. One of his football coaches was acting as a referee and after he reminded him "players win games, coaches lose". I thought it was a good lesson for him, considering he is thinking about becoming a coach as a career. I have to admit, he did a pretty good job of getting things together and making the junior side of things work as a team. I could see a lot of passion in Mijo, and for all we know, he might actually be on to something, in wanting to become a coach someday.
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