Chris' first Football game!

Chris had his first football game. He has been practicing now for 3 weeks. This is full contact, tackle football. Not for the light hearted. He has had a full week of conditioning, tackling drills, all of it. I was surprised at first at how intense it was. But I quickly learned to love it, it has made Chris really have to pay attention and do what he is told. A couple extra laps will help that! Push ups are also a great motivator I've discovered, now if it could only work at home! He practiced Mon-Fri 90 minutes a day (until the games started, then it went to Tues-Fri and games on Sat.) He has a fantastic coach, Coach Doutre (the whole coaching staff is great). GO North Ogden Warriors!!

On this day (his first game), we dropped him off the hour early that he has to be there, went to get some food and then found a seat outside the warm up field (no one but coaches and players on the warm up field). It was so exciting to watch him, it was a proud moment. When we heard the siren for the end of the game before ours the team huddled up did their cheer and proceeded to run from the warm up field to the sideline of the game field. Now let me say I'm not an emotional mom I don't cry every time my kids do something new or turn a year older, but as he ran by, I'll tell you what, I teared up so fast I couldn't see through the camera lense to find him for a picture. It's amazing to watch him go through the practices, which were a lot of hard work, and come out this confident boy who is so excited to get on that field. This team is a first year player only team, they had to learn everything they needed to know in 3 weeks. They will learn more as the season goes on but it was soo great to watch how the coach would call in a play, and these 7-8 year old boys would line up right and they would know what was going to happen with the ball, it was just GREAT.
Any way, the team got over to the sideline to find only that the game before theirs was being delayed due to lightning. We were ordered to our cars until the storm passed, it did and the last 2 minutes of the other game was finished and then we started our game. Chris plays left guard (weighing in at 52 pounds and as skinny as a stick, a mighty left guard he was). All their hard work paid off, the other team looked so confused and the coach always had to realign his players, our team had a play called and they lined up. It did confuse Chris a couple of times after they would switch goal sides, he would occasionally line up on the right side instead of the left. They won in mighty fashion 20-0.