It was a misty Sunday morning yesterday but it didn't matter since the stands at Benoît-Vachon High School were covered with a nicely set up roof with a back wall. The ongoing mist combined with the fact that it was our kids' first game on a natural field made for much slipping and sliding early on. It slippery field played games on both offense though. Our defense came out real strong early on and we held a 22-0 lead at the half.
More of the same in the second half, well even more domination from our defense, always providing the offense with great starting positions drive after drive. Despite numerous offensive penalties (offsides, illegal blocking and holding) we kept on marching forward, and scoring. Final score: 48-0.
The kids will certainly have to cut down on a specific type of penalties. As I said before, multiple motions from receivers are allowed prior to the ball being snapped and any receiver can be running forward when the ball is snapped, as long as he does not cross the line of scrimmage before the ball is snapped. If he does, an offensive offside penalty is called. We had more than five of those in the game yesterday with at least a couple of them negating two big plays that would have resulted in first downs. These are mental mistakes, or at the very least timing problems. I can see a kid too eager to block in the heat of the moment and blocking in the back, or holding a defender, but a receiver just not timing his steps with the QB's count, it's just sloppy play, or well, sloppy coaching. By that I mean that it didn't develop during the game. The kids must have been making these mistakes during practice, but no coaches are standing right at the line of scrimmage to check if anybody crosses it before the ball is snapped so nobody realized it was happening...
As for Andrew, his team received the opening kickoff and started on offense. He wasn't part of the line at that point but that was expected. When the defense took on the field, I saw that they were in a 3-3 formation and he wasn't one of the three down linemen. I pretty much expected it to be the same as for the last couple of games, i.e. not seeing him get in the game until mid second quarter, but in their next defensive drive, they were back to a 4-3 and he was in there at DT. He played regularly after that, being subbed out for a couple drives in the second and fourth quarters, replaced by a backup linebacker. Turns out a defensive lineman was missing for the game and Andrew told us after the game that he was named a starter at DT prior to the game. He had a good game, holding his ground and applying decent pressure from the middle of the line. He knocked a guard down on his ass once, got in on a couple of tackles (assisting) and came ever so close to recovering a fumbled ball. The ball bounced off his knee and was recovered back by the running back.
Again, I would have liked to see him at center in the last couple minutes of the game, when the score was already 40-0, but he stayed at DT until the very last drive. Still, it was a fun game with him coming back home happy that he contributed, and his parents happy that they were able to cheer him on.
Speaking of cheering, the setup for the field was pretty nice with the stands on one side and the team benches on the other, like you see in many places. Thing was, there was a small forest right behind the team benches and my first call of "GO CORSAIRES!!!" reverberated back to us in echo. There really was no noise as it was right before kickoff and all parents in the stands had a good laugh about it. When asked if they could hear us cheer for them during the game, Andrew later told me that he didn't really hear during the game, but that he knew that the first "GO CORSAIRES!!!" just prior to kickoff was me. He said he could recognize my voice clearly.
Kids have a bye next weekend and I wondered to my wife how the coaches will do to keep them motivated this week. Coming off a 48-0 win, I'm sure the coaches have seen plenty to work on, especially on the offensive side of things, but I'm sure some of the kids will have their heads ballooning to big sizes with this 4-0 start.
FM