Finally Over

     I can now say that our junior tackle football season is finally over!  NO, we didn't make it to play-offs....we just now had our end of the season banquet!  If you recall in an earlier post, Andrew was struggling with playing time on his team.  I eventually talked to the coach, got the reply that I expected (we play to win and Andrew is smaller than a lot of the other boys, he doesn't pay attention, and did I say we play to win), and let Andrew make the decision.  Andrew decided (all on his own) that he was a part of the team and he would play the rest of the season!  All I can say is that I am so proud of my son!

     Well our team went on to have an end record of 3-5.  That's right our PLAY TO WIN coaches only had 3 wins!  Of the eight games, Andrew played in 4 of the games and saw ZERO playtime in 4 of the games.  Just to put things into perspective....Andrew played in 2 games that we won and 2 games that we got the stuffing knocked out of us.  The AWESOME coaches even sat Andrew the entire last game of the season....a game that we won.  Andrew was not the only boy to be treated this way.  There were 3 other sixth graders and 2 seventh graders that received little to no play time.
     Andrew has decided that he no longer likes football.  So thanks to some blind coaches, they have destroyed my son's desire to ever play football again.  I asked Andrew if he wanted to play on the school's basketball team and his reply was "No, it will just be the same as football."  Thanks coaches.  You've killed my son's spirit and taken away his hope. 

     So three weeks after the end of playing, we had our banquet.  The banquet was for the middle school junior tackle as well as the younger boys' teams (grades 2-5).  Normally, the middle schoolers have their own banquet but it was combined this year.  It  was a potluck lunch and most of the team was there.  The boys received a nice trophy.  There was one two things missing...the head coaches!  That's right the head sixth-seventh grade coach and the head eighth grade coach were MIA.  And to make things worse, they're both teachers of the school.  I can't imagine where their priorities are, but it definitely isn't with the youth that they're supposed to be role models for.  Trust me, I wasn't the only one who noticed their absence.  There were a lot of whispers going around when a parent had to step in and hand out the trophies to the middle school boys.  That parent was even kind enough to add some nice comments about the boys and their hard work throughout the season.

     Andrew came home and said "Well that was nice.  I've got a really cool trophy to put on my dresser."  Leave it to my son to always find the silver lining.  I need to tell him more just how proud I am of him and how much I love him.