Yesterday was Alaric’s first football game. It was the team’s first game also, since the team was just formed this year as a feeder for the Lutheran high school. Two thirds of the 7th and 8th graders had never played an official game before yesterday. So it was really interesting. Oh, I forgot to mention that they were playing against a long-established team that won their division last year. :-)
I have to say that they got out there and worked and tried. For a first time, it could have been much worse. It was a clean game, with only one penalty the whole game. No offsides or false starts or things like that, which could easily have been a problem with a new team. I did observe during the game that there seemed to be a problem with tackling, and, sure enough, Alaric told me after the game that that was what they were going to work on more this week.

I guess you can only cover so much material in just three weeks when you’re starting from scratch. Conditioning and stances and procedures and routes and all that is a good start. Hopefully they’ll get better at tackling this week and improve for this next week’s game. The season is only six weeks long, with games every Sunday afternoon. So, one down, five to go. :-)
[tags]football, junior-high, sports[/tags]